{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark","title":"so we beat on, boats against the current,","subtitle":"borne back ceaselessly into the past.","author":{"name":"hell to ships, hell to men, and hell to cities."},"link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"service.feed","type":"application\/x.atom+xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom","title":"so we beat on, boats against the current,"}}],"updated":"2019-04-15T03:35:16Z","entry":[{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:132299","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/132299.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=132299"}}],"title":"Rarelywritten placeholder","published":"2015-03-04T00:04:27Z","updated":"2015-03-19T10:51:16Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"rarelywritten"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"the silent spy"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"the season of passage"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"nancy drew"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"dragon age"}}],"content":"I'm out of the country till the 18th of March with very limited free time, but I plan to update this placeholder with an actual letter as soon as I return. Thank you for your patience, Rarelywritten writer. :)

Please, check back here on the 19th for the letter.

<\/strike>Dear Rarelywritten Writer,

Thank you for offering to write one or more of the awesome women of my super rare fandoms. I love fictional women almost more than anything else in the entire world, so I am going to be ridiculously easy to please on this one.

Besides that, I also love women interacting with each other, women maintaining complex bonds with each other, women supporting each other, and generally being awesome. I like het, gen, and femslash (m\/m is really not my cup of tea because of, you guessed it, the lack of women.) If there's going to be a power imbalance in a het relationship, I prefer the scales to be tipped over at the female side (I have a huge kink for good\/moral men in love with complicated\/morally ambiguous women). I love polyamory fic, but I would prefer the focus there to be on the emotional\/relationship dynamics aspects of it and not on the hot threesomes. Character study, plotty fic with a characterization focus, relationship study, etc are all awesome. I am not a huge fan of porn without plot, mainly because I would rather have something that's more grounded in characterization, but I don't have a problem with smut itself as long as it comes as part of a larger story. I enjoy stories with complex characterization and interactions that reveal those bits of the characters. I am okay with any rating you feel up to.

Some of my squicks include: non-con sex and it's very likely that what most of fandom considers dub-con will also push the wrong buttons for me. I dislike the fictional trope of building one woman up at the expense of another, tearing one woman down to build up another, women fighting over men, women's lives revolving around the men in their lives. I do love conflict, though, and women who love each other despite conflict (PLL is an excellent example of something that maintains complex conflicts and interests while still having women loving women at its heart.)

Thoughts on specific requests\/fandoms:



Dragon Age - All Media Types


Sophia Dryden -<\/strong>

I find Sophia incredibly fascinating in all her aspects.  I love the brief glimpses we get into her ambition, her survival skills, her pragmatism, and I love her tragic ending.  Now, I generally hate women having tragic endings, but I am a huge fan of the horror elements of Dragon Age, and the bit with Sophia really creeped me out.  And I can't help but wonder about her last days there, before she was taken over by a demon.  Did she make a deal with the devil in order to survive (a bit like Avernus did? And it would fit with what we know of her) or were there other circumstances there?

I also highly suspect and am intrigued by the fact that Avernus seems to have  "Courtly Love" levels of admiration for Sophia, and I am interested in them being the only two survivors at Soldier's Peak as the demons slowly took over the place, as well as what seems to have been previously made mutual agreement to summon demons as a last resort.  I would love to see an evolution of this relationship from the days of actual war and fighting to the days of waiting as the demons consumed them in different ways.

Similarly, I would love an evolution of Sophia or glimpses of Sophia in different parts of her life.  Really, I don't think there's any Sophia fic out there, so any way you can add to her woefully brief existing canon would be appreciated!

Bethany Hawke -<\/strong>

My only request here is for Warden!Bethany.  I find her infinitely more interesting than the more popular Circle!Bethany.  While people seem to go with Circle!Bethany because it makes Bethany happy, I would argue that ultimately, the Warden path is what brings Bethany into her own, which I suspect would lead to awesome things for her post-game.  The Circle path doesn't remove Bethany from her former life, it just isolates her to a tiny corner of it, and still fits into expectations she had for herself.

But I absolutely love how the Warden path really is a kind of death and rebirth, how absolutely it takes her away from the life that she and her sister (I do have a huge preference for a female!Hawke, and nothing gets me like bonds between sisters) built for herself, forcing her to reinvent her self\/life.  So it just takes her a bit longer to find herself again in this new life, but I love how it makes her to question her faith in the Maker (which is so great initially that she seems to have internalized the Chantry's teachings against mages), forces her to question things she took for granted, and just...how it gives her a bitter edge.

I am especially interested in Warden!Bethany colliding with her old life, when she makes such an effort to forget it, and all the conflict and struggle that comes with that.  I ship her with Fenris, Isabela, and Sebastian (possibly in that order, but it really depends on the story), so I am happy with any interaction with these characters, and I would especially love seeing Bethany post-game, fighting for survival away from Kirkwall with the rest of the companions, trying to fit in the place she left behind, but finding it too small for her now.
.<\/a>


Dragon Age: Inquisition

Morrigan, Leliana

<\/strong>
This game had so much potential and SO MANY MISSED opporutnities when it came to developing characters and their connections that it's painful to think about.  Among these missed opportunities was the lack of focus on the relationships developed in previous games.  I really, REALLY wish that we had gotten a more nuanced view of the Morrigan and Leliana relationship than we actually did.  I mean, they started out as not getting along, but they did save the world together, and spent a considerable amount of time together.  And Leliana is way too smart and way too good at reading people to not have read Morrigan's abrasiveness as the act that it was, and Morrigan had to have admired Leliana's skills at playing roles. 


They're so similar, and have such parallel journeys.  Leliana who has a dark past that she's trying to forget while pretending to be nice and naive, and Morrigan who IS naive and lost in the world of humans, but pretends to be dark and abrasive to push people away, and the way the game slowly reveals their layers to reveal that dichotomy that makes them opposites but also the same the core is one of my favorite things about the first game EVER.
Leliana has changed and grown and adapted and in same ways, come back to her darker past since the first game, but we don't see as much of a focus on all the way Morrigan has changed and adapted and learned things about herself.  I want a fic to explore more of that, and explore Morrigan and Leliana coming to appreciate each other and learn each other again.  Um, I should admit here that I ship them incredibly hard, and I would love femslash.


Given all these layers and connections, it strikes me as odd that Leliana is so dimissive about Morrigan and has nothing good to say about her when she first mentions her.  The only thing that makes sense to me is if they have a tragically short-lived ill-fated affair the last time Leliana was in Orlais, which would explain Leliana's bitterness.  I would love a story set in the present that takes that as a possible explanation for Leliana's thoughts on Morrigan.  Or even a story about that affair. 


But honestly...I just want interesting, nuanced interaction between my two favorite Dragon Age ladies, that takes into account their histories, and their commonalities. 
.<\/a>


Nancy Drew - Video Games<\/strong>

Nancy Drew, Zoe Wolfe<\/strong>


"The Silent Spy" - So, I totally fell in love with this game, and it may be my favorite of the series, not least because it featured not just Nancy kicking ass, but featured MULTIPLE female spies.  I loved Kate Drew and her backstory, and Zoe Wolfe is just the kind of abrasive, aggressive antagonist-ish character that I tend to fall for all the time.  I loved Nancy's connection to her mother, and her push-pull powerplay with Zoe that eventually turned into grudging respect that allowed them to work together.  I just want more of that dynamic.
What I would ABSOLUTELY love is seeing Zoe and Nancy working together on a case again, growing closer, and learning to like\/care about each other.  I WOULD LOVE FEMSLASH, but it's not required, if you don't ship them.  I would love it extra hard if the case they're working on together is related to Revanant and Kate Drew, and if Kate actually turns out to be alive (which is ALL I wanted from the game, but the game failed me.)
So, um, I loved this game and just want more of these epic women. 
.<\/a>

Christopher Pike - The Season of Passage


Lauren Wagner<\/strong>


My preference here is for Lauren\/Gary shippy fic, but Lauren is my favorite, and I promise you that Lauren gen will make me equally happy, if you're not up to writing het fic.


 It's been many years since I read the book last, and so my memory of this is a little vague. I don't usually ship in books, especially if it's not part of a series, but I loved their relationship and every aspect of it so, so much. Honestly, I would really love anything with them and some shippy interaction, but here are some of the things I'm especially interested in:


So, a lot of people don't like angst and pain for exchanges. I am not one of those people. I'm generally fond of the character insights and psychological complexity brought on by difficult circumstances. This is likely why book four is my favorite, wherein Lauren and Gary are the only ones left behind on the spaceship. That book, more than anything, makes me ship them. I love the uncertainty of survival mixed with the hope they have of getting out. I love that they've lost everyone but it doesn't matter because they still have each other. Really, anything set within this book will make me insanely happy. Comfort sex, fun confessions, delusional pretending and plans for when they get back home? Will all be awesome.


Alternatively, if you're not comfortable writing within the continuity of the book, one thing that I always wondered about while reading the book was why Lauren and Gary weren't together since they seemed better suited to each other than Terry did to Lauren. I'm convinced that Gary was, at least, half (if not completely) in love with Lauren, which is especially apparent in book four. And Lauren also had some fun, complex feelings regarding him. I would not be opposed to some fun, shippy interaction pre-book, after Lauren first joined the crew. Or even a one-night stand.


As for Lauren, I am interested in SO many things about her, not least of all is her relationship with Jenny, and her continued devotion to her despite the fact that Jenny leads to her predictment in many ways.  I love fictional sisters more than anything else ever, so I definitely don't want anything that would undermine their bond, but a complex exploration of some complicated feelings would be lovely.


I also love, love, love this book's horror elements, and would absolutely love something that explores Lauren's mind while she's possessed.


Also! Lauren\/Jessica!  Would make me happy. 
I will also be equally happy to have anything set within any other time during the book that inspires you.
.<\/a>



I really hope that I don't sound too hard to please. I just have lots of thoughts on all of these women and I don't often get a chance to squee over them.  Please, feel free to do something creative with the details\/characters, if you think it would make a better story. My ideas are more to inspire your creativity than to limit it.

I am looking forward to reading whatever you come up with and to building altars to the power of your awesome creative powers.

Lastly, if you have any questions about something you want to do or something you're unsure about, you can ask either \"[personal<\/a>aphrodite_mine<\/b><\/a><\/span>  or \"[personal<\/a>meganbmoore<\/b><\/a><\/span> . Both of them are familiar with my fictional preferences and some or all of these fandoms.

<\/strike>\n\nThis entry was originally posted at http:\/\/prozacpark.dreamwidth.org\/126844.html<\/a>. Please comment there using OpenID<\/a>.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:131913","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/131913.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=131913"}}],"title":"[vid] Fever - Elizabeth Weir x John Sheppard (Stargate: Atlantis)","published":"2014-10-07T21:40:19Z","updated":"2014-10-07T21:40:19Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"the elizabeth weir show"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"stargate atlantis"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"elizabeth weir"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"sheppard x weir"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"john sheppard"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"queen of atlantis queen of my heart"}}],"content":"

Fever<\/b><\/p>


Fandom:<\/b> Stargate: Atlantis (or as I like to call it, "The Elizabeth Weir Show.")
Music:<\/b> "I Say Fever" by Ramona Falls.
Notes:<\/b> Made for Sparktober 2014, also known as the year I discovered this 10-year-old fandom and then drowned in Elizabeth Weir feels.<\/p>


Streaming on Vimeo<\/a> l Streaming on YouTube<\/a> I Download *.mpg file (135 mbs)<\/a> I Download *.avi file (24 mbs) <\/a><\/p>

<\/p>

<\/p>

Fever - John Sheppard x Elizabeth Weir (stargate: atlantis)<\/a> from prozacpark<\/a> on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>


Lyrics -

<\/p>


Before she met me she took herself to wait five years
After I met her, her teacher said "Best wait five years."
I ask my neighbors, they said it's wise to wait five years.<\/i><\/p>


I say "Fever."<\/i><\/p>


I told a friend how I'm feeling and this made her sad
'Cause she fears that no man will ever desire her so bad.
How dare I feel this and do naught but sit on my hands.<\/i><\/p>


I say "Fever."<\/i><\/p>


Hold my heart like a hot potato,
Push the clock for an hour later.
This is just code to decipher
Found my ploughman, chased the piper.
That ended up.
That's all now.
These are the ones who talk.
Never a lick, needs her to kiss him.<\/i><\/p>


The first five years go by and we are no longer here.
I blame myself for not taking steps to draw her near.
I try to decide what to do now based on love not fear.<\/i><\/p>


I say "Fever."<\/i><\/p>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:131179","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/131179.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=131179"}}],"title":"rarewomen, wiscon, and accidentally falling into decade old fandoms.","published":"2014-05-20T23:35:20Z","updated":"2014-10-07T21:46:52Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"story of my life"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"rarewomen"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"klytemnestra"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"wiscon"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"elizabeth weir"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"greek mythology"}}],"content":"1). For rarewomen this year, I wrote "Klytemnestra, in Fragments<\/a>" for <\/a>yetanothermask<\/b><\/a><\/span>. I have been eyeing her prompts for years and always meant to write her treats, because of how many lit fandoms we share, but my procrastination almost always means that I have time to just write my own assignment. But the universe aligned this year to match us.

I got TWO lovely stories this year. "When a Lovely Flame Dies<\/a>" is the MUCH anticipated Twin Peaks\/Pretty Little Liars crossover that I have been wanting forever, with Spencer Hastings and Audrey Horne, that everyone should read if you're familiar with these fandoms. The second fic I got is "you're in my firing line<\/a>," a great backstory for Arlessa Isolde from "Dragon Age" that manages to keep her sympathetic without blunting her sharper edges.

I haven't had time to read any other stories, but I have a lot of bookmarks that I need to revisit once I get back from Wiscon.

2). WISCON. I'm going again this year. I am not entirely sure which panels I'll be attending, but like last year, I assume that my panel schedule will be abandoned in interest of hanging out with awesome people. I'll be getting there early Thursday, then I'm planning on doing the PoC dinner on Friday night and Vid party on Saturday night (like, I'll be there from 9 pm to 3am, or until they turn off everything and politely ask us to leave). If you're going (and we haven't already discussed this), let me know and I'll message you with my contact details so we can be sure to meet up.

3). The Elizabeth Weir Show. So, hi, friendslist, I might have ACCIDENTALLY fallen into a ten-year-old fandom, to my utter misery. As you may already know, I am not a huge fan of the Stargate Franchise, with its weird colonial\/imperialistic politics, and the general disregard for multiplicity of cultural experiences, not to mention its abysmal treatment of women. But it does have some awesome women, so I sometimes consume an abbreviated version of these canons.

Back when SGA was actually airing, I only knew that something HORRIBLE had happened on the show, and pretty much everyone on my friendslist was very, very upset about it. I was mostly just...glad I didn't watch the show, but also very, very curious about what had happened. But apparently not enough to have looked it up?

So, of course, I go into SGA, expecting mostly to ship Elizabeth\/John and having lots of fic to read (which, let's be honest, was my main motivation, since having lots of Annie\/Jeff fic SPOILED me for more obscure pairings), and then NO ONE WARNED ME about Elizabeth Weir, and I never expected to have this level of feels over her, but here I am, crying over a dead fictional woman at my keyboard again (like, is there a point where you get to be too old for this? I DOUBT IT, somehow), and I signed up for this willingly, apparently?

ANYWAY, I just needed to catalogue my stupidity here for all to see, and for my future self to laugh at and possibly avoid. BUT! If any of you are still here, you should come and flail with me over Elizabeth Weir, because I have all these FEELINGS and no one to flail them at. Um."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:129943","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/129943.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=129943"}}],"title":"Movie Rec: Jab We Met (Bollywood)","published":"2013-06-05T23:58:04Z","updated":"2014-07-12T06:21:13Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"bollywood"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"jab we met"}}],"content":""Jab We Met" is a pretty traditional romance narrative at surface level, which is also quitely but very effectively subverting a lot of the common romance tropes.  It's one of my favorite Bollywood movies, but it's rarely one that I use to convert people mostly because it isn't a movie that could only exist in Bollywood.  It's a pretty universally awesome romance narrative, all around.

HOWEVER, there is an aspect of it that makes it more subversive given the cultural context, which is that the heroine, while wanting a romantic happy ending for herself, wants one that's traditionally frowned upon by her culture.

While the narrative starts with the premise of a Brooding Hero meeting his Manic Pixie Dreamgirl, that's where the similarities end.  Because we find out a lot more about Geet, her hopes and dreams, and her family than we ever do about him.  One of the only things we do know about him is that at some point in his childhood, his mother ran off with another man because she didn't love his father.  Brooding Hero clearly feels that his mother's elopement has brought great shame to his family, through which the narrative gives us a glimpse of what kind of social disgrace Geet is possibly setting herself up for by wanting to elope.

However, the movie has Geet identifying with the mother pretty early on, and before the movie ends, this turns into an epic commentary on women and their choices and about doing what makes you happy rather than following patriarchal social conventions that stifle you.  So the most important thing we DO know about him still becomes about her.  <3

I never have much to say about men in fiction, but the male protagonist of this movie is one that I quite like.  He spends a good part of the movie being in love with her, but never even telling her, because he sees that as his own issue, and nothing *she* should be burdened with.  Like, he has ZERO need for his feelings for her to be validated or returned.  Which NEVER happens in romance narratives (except for in "Pride and Prejudice," and that's why it's my favorite.)

And Geet!  <3  Geet is one of the most self-assured and confident heroines I have ever come across in any narrative.  She knows what she wants, and she has no hesitation or doubts about how she's going to get it.  She has a strong sense of self that briefly wavers in the face of the utter force of everything that's against her, but comes back stronger than ever.

This is, by all means, set up as a narrative where the heroine would Learn Her Lesson about Wanting Unconventional Things, but the entire movie sets out to show HER way of life as the correct one, with everyone around her adapting to her worldview.  Even though the specifics of what she wants for herself change, she still gets the exact kind of happy ending she set out to chase for herself.

I also love her need to create drama and constantly strive to write out a more interesting narrative for herself than the one life would otherwise give her.  She reminds me of Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse or Catherine Morland, except that both of these women had to learn a lesson about Needing to be Serious\/Mature, while Geet keeps on being herself.  <3

Like, the speech that both Emma and Catherine get from the Men Who Love Them and Know Better?  Geet gets that about halfway through the movie, only to totally set the guy straight, and that is literally the actual moment he falls for her.  BECAUSE SHE REFUSED TO SUBSCRIBE TO HIS WORLD VIEW.  And then he subscribes to her awesomeness.  You should, too.

This movie is streaming on Netflix, but the subtitles are questionable.  I may, um, have resources here later.  I am currently working on rewriting large bits of the subtitles, hopefully improving them.  I will also upload that file once I am done.

This entry was originally posted at http:\/\/prozacpark.dreamwidth.org\/123398.html<\/a>. Please comment there using OpenID<\/a>.<\/span>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:129249","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/129249.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=129249"}}],"title":"[Vid] Wiscon Premiere - Gingerbread Coffin (pretty little liars)","published":"2013-05-28T19:45:59Z","updated":"2014-07-13T21:19:34Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"alison dilaurentis"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"spencer hastings"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"bechdel passing every episode"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pretty little liars"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gothic fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"emily fields"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"hanna marin"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"aria montgomery"}}],"content":"Gingerbread Coffin<\/b>
Fandom: Pretty Little Liars
Music: Rasputina
Summary: "She's gone, but she's everywhere."
Description: "Gingerbread Coffin" explores the gothic themes of "Pretty Little Liars" -- the haunting and the haunted, relics of the past, buried secrets, and women who live on after death -- and how those themes are subverted through the bonds of female friendship in a narrative with multiple heroines. (Someday, I will write meta on this, but meanwhile, there's this.)
Notes: This premiered at the Wiscon 37 Vid Party this past weekend.

Streaming on Vimeo<\/a> l Download *.avi file<\/a> (110 MBs) l Download Subtitles<\/a>

password: alison

Gingerbread Coffin - "She's gone, but she's everywhere."<\/a> from prozacpark<\/a> on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>


If you're interested in trying out "Pretty Little Liars," I have a plug post here<\/a>. And there's an incredible meta intro post on PLL here<\/a>, which refers to it as the "most subversively feminist show on tv," and I don't think I have ever agreed with anything more in my entire life. ;) First two seasons are available for streaming on Netflix."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:126866","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/126866.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=126866"}}],"title":"TV REC: \"Pretty Little Liars\" and why you should be watching it. ","published":"2012-11-08T23:56:36Z","updated":"2014-07-12T06:28:32Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"spencer hastings"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"tv rec"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"media and gender"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pretty little liars"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"emily fields"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"hanna marin"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"recs"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"aria montgomery"}}],"content":"So, friendslist, tired of watching tv shows with not enough women, interaction between women, women of color, lesbian women? I know I am. And what's keeping me happy, while becoming increasingly disappointed in other shows for failing me on these fronts, is "Pretty Little Liars."

It's not a show that requires a large level of investment, and it only has light touches of genre (it borrows a fair bit from mystery\/gothic). The plot can be better, but I admit that I don't pay attention to it. It's kind of hard to pay attention to anything else while I am being actively WOWED by how many women are interacting in positive ways on my screen, while NEVER being defined by their relationships to men (who are constantly sidelined on this show).

It's not a brilliant tv show in terms of themes or plot, but it is a brilliant character drama that consistently chooses to focus on the kinds of relationships that are missing from tv.

So if you're going to be missing tv in this upcoming hiatus, I highly recommend that you binge on "Pretty Little Liars." Like I said, low investment, high pay-off.

<\/div>


The premise of "Pretty Little Liars" is nothing new. It revolves around the tragic death of a beautiful young girl, and the focus is on the unraveling of the community that comes from this death. But while my beloved "Twin Peaks" gave me this premise and left the secrets to be uncovered primarily by a male detective, "Pretty Little Liars" is firmly focused on women to such a degree that it takes this problematic premise and turns it into one of the most positive portrayals of women on television in the recent years.

The perfect combination of "Twin Peaks" and Christopher Pike's Young Adult mystery novels, "Pretty Little Liars" is very much a show written for me, but I believe it has a lot of things going for it that should make it appealing to even people who didn't grow up reading women-centered YA horror\/mystery novels.

The show starts not with the death but with the discovery of the body of Alison Dilaurentis, who had been missing for the previous year, suspected dead but presumed missing. With the discovery of the death, the hunt for the killer begins and at the center of the story are Alison's clique of friends who shared her secrets and whose secrets she used to hold power over them. Spencer, Aria, Hanna, and Emily have drifted apart in the year since Alison went missing, driven away by secrets as well as by the tragedy. But it seems that Alison wasn't the only one who was privy to their secrets and the four of them start receiving anonymous text messages from someone who claims to know their deepest secrets and threatens to reveal them if they don't do what's asked of them.

Once again driven together by threats and secrets, the four girls form a complex bond that starts out uncomfortable but turns into a deep friendship. This show fails hard at the reverse version of the Bechdel test, and we rarely get any scenes with two men at the center of them. Women are not only the center of this story, but they are also at the center of each and every meaningful relationship in this show. And no relationship between women is one-dimensional. This show consistently takes women who were introduced as antagonists and turns them into unwilling allies and eventually friends.

Spencer is the snarkiest and the most pragmatic of the group, predictably making her my favorite. There's Hanna, who is both snarky and incredibly compassionate and maintains one of the most positive parent-child relationship on tv with her awesomely complex (and morally ambiguous!) mother. There's Emily who is both a woman of color and a lesbian, who also happens to be in a relationship with another woman of color. There's Mona, another woman of color, who is not part of the core group but at its fringes who starts out as an antagonist but turns into much more, and no relationship between any women is simple or stereotypical.

In a format popularized by Buffy<\/i> and Roswell<\/i> (as much as Roswell<\/i> could be said to have popularized anything ;), there's a theme of us against the world that isolates them from most others around them, especially adults. Unlike these, though, this show has a more gothic twist on this theme, with the secrets being shared and hidden by women. Even so, adults aren't portrayed as untrustworthy, but rather that the siniester nature of 'A' makes it so that any time they do trust the adults, it ends up making things worse for them. The more the secrets drive them away from the larger world, the more the girls grow closer to each other, and the relationships grow and evolve throughout the series, with them picking each other over other bonds in their lives, and more importantly, over the men in their lives.

One of the things I love best about this show is its portrayal of Alison. Alison is as vivid and real as Laura Palmer was elusive and mythic and while the focus is sometimes on her cruelty, I never feel like the show wants me to dislike her. And I certainly never feel like either the show or any of our protagonists judge Alison? All the girls share a complex relationship with Alison, the queen bee of their group, who was often manipulative and controlling. But even so, it's clear that each of the girls loved\/admired her in their own way, and the relationship between Alison and each of the girls is unique and three-dimensional, with lots of flashbacks.

This show is also somewhat deconstructive of the Mean Girls trope. With a title that outright calls its own protagonist liars, you would think the show has some disdain for its protagonists, as is sometimes the case with teen movies\/shows with mean girl heroines. But it takes the clique of girls that you're usually supposed to either dislike or not take seriously, and develops them all as fully realized people with complex and positive relationships that endure (as opposed to fiction's usual frenemy trope with Mean Girl protagonists). Taglines like "Never trust a pretty girl with an ugly secret" turn out to be ironic in the light of the actual text, where while keeping secrets is initially what started the whole thing, keeping them is what also often saves their lives. Alison outright says that it was TELLING the truth that got her killed, ending with "You're always better off with a really good lie." What all of this does give us are four morally ambiguous protagonists who have all done things they're not proud of, but who are all generally good people in bad situations. And the show never, ever puts these women or their concerns down. As you would expect, this show was developed and is being written primarily by a woman, Marlene King.

And the pacing on this show! Reminds me of early "Vampire Diaries." Lots of things happen every week, and while the mystery keeps getting stretched out, it's clear that the focus isn't really on who killed Alison as much as it's on how the death (and the relationship with the very alive Alison) affected all the women around her. I have no idea where this show is going, and I kind of don't care? As long as it keeps giving me this many complex women, and this much awesome soapy delightful drama and mystery, I'll be here.

Let me end with five reasons you should be watching this. For things that happen in other shows (female-driven or otherwise) that don't here:

1). Men talking over plots slowly: As mentioned already, this show has consistently been committed to failing the gender-reversed version of the Bechdel test since it started. Most episodes pass by without any m\/m interaction, and on the rare occasion that it occurs, women are the topic of conversation. I honestly don't think this show has EVER had a scene with two men talking about things other than women.

2). Women being written in the context of relationships: When even shows like Farscape and Battlestar Galactica with their initial positive portrayals of women and women in relationships end up failing HARD at keeping the integrity of women's arcs while writing them in relationships with men the narrative deems more important than them, it's incredibly refreshing to see anything on tv that doesn't fall into this trap. Three of the four main protagnoists are in commited relationships with men, who drift in and out of their lives as the episodes demand and are quickly written out and away when important stuff is happening because the main plot revolves around the four girls.

It is a testament to this show's lack of emphasis on men that Spencer Hastings has become my favorite character while being in a steady relationship with a guy I find actively distasteful to highly annoying<\/i>. Her relationship with a man is that insignificant<\/i> to her larger arc. YOU GUYS, this almost NEVER happens with women in het relationships.

3). Mothers and daughters: While the rest of tv world is interested in exploring relationships between fathers and sons (you don't need examples of this from me, I am sure) and female driven shows are consistently interested in their female protagonists relationships' with their fathers (Alias, Revenge, Veronica Mars, etc), "Pretty Little Liars" is consistently interested in relationships between mothers and daughters. Aria and Spencer get some focus on their relationships with their fathers, but primarily, the show chooses to focus on the girls' relationships with their mothers, and even focuses on their mothers' relationships with each other<\/i>. Mothers are given a narrative prominence over fathers in this narrative, which is also very rare in patriarchal narratives.

4). Women fighting with each other: In so many narratives with multiple women where women are set up to rival each other and constantly in antagonist relationships (I love Revenge, but let's face it, the whole show is built on the premise of women vs. women, as was Damages, apparently, sigh.), I constantly find myself making up headcanons to come up with more POSITIVE reasons for why these women are fighting or at odds with each other. This is a large part of why I tend to ship female characters in antagonist relationships. In "Pretty Little Liars," it's actual<\/i> canon that when these women fight, it's more often than not a pretend feud to throw people off, and when they hurt each other, accidentally or otherwise, it's done in the interest of keeping the others safe or even in the worst case scenario, it still comes from a complex place that's equal parts love and hate, mingled in.

5). Female friendships disappearing over time as MORE IMPORTANT things take over (I am looking at you, Vampire Diaries): This show develops networks of relationships with a multitude of women: None of the four main girls are alike, and as a result, none of their relationships with each other are similar. They all fulfill different (but equally important) roles in each other's lives, and as a result, we have have SIX UNIQUE FRIENDSHIPS between women, not to mention the relationships these women have with Alison and other women in their lives. Honestly, this show has more women loving women than ALL THE OTHER SHOWS I AM WATCHING PUT TOGETHER. And considering that I generally only watch tv with multiple women, that's saying a lot.

<\/a>

Ready to watch it? Netflix has the first two seasons streaming online. The show is currently halfway through its third season and returns after a hiatus on January 8th. It's also been renewed for a fourth season. If you catch up on the first two seasons, feel free to drop me a line here or email me for, um, more updates so you can catch up in time for its return."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:125920","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/125920.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=125920"}}],"title":"movie reviews: \"The Hunger Games\" and \"Avengers.\"","published":"2012-05-22T23:48:10Z","updated":"2014-07-12T06:41:01Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"comics"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"the hunger games"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"movie review"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"avengers"}}],"content":"Okay, not reviews so much as random, not-very-deep thoughts on the movies. I watched them both over a week ago, and have probably forgotten things I actually wanted to talk about.



I went and saw "The Hunger Games" movie, and I want to have thoughts on the movie? But, um, it's basically a study in why movies are my LEAST favorite medium, and why any time someone asks me if I have seen some movie, the answer is usually, "Not unless I was forced to."

But, all things being equal, I would rather read a book, read comics, play a video game, watch a tv show, etc, all over watching a movie of the same thing. Because movies, in general, just do NOT have enough time to explore all the bits of characterization that I like to see explored. And I get almost nothing about of fiction unless and until I feel connected to the characters.

I generally dislike pilots of any tv show because there's this need to get the characters across quickly and what we get is what i like to refer to as the Pilot Characterization phenomemnon, where one aspect of the character is picked and HAMMERED into our minds so the character stands out (and likely gets reduced to a streotype). Movies do that, but without time to go back and add LAYERS.

So, basically, all of that happened. I went in knowing that the most important aspect of the book for me will be lost. Which is the meta level of the first person narrative POV (and wow, we don't even get Katniss voiceovers\/narrative voice, which MAY have taken care of some of my issues with being taken out of her viewpoint), but also, the POV is what makes it clear to me how much of what Katniss does is a conscious PERFORMANCE on her part.

HI, I have a huge thing for modernism and feminist modern\/post-modern literature. One of my favorite things in the whole universe are works that explore the idea of traditional perception of femininity and romance as an active performance on the women's part. And so that got lost, as did most of Katniss' survivalist manipulations and her general calculating nature. Sigh. I still like her, but I don't know if I would EVER feel the intense love that I do for her if the movies had been my only exposure to her.

I do feel like the movie made an effort to make her more 'likable' and took away the PERFORMANCE bit of Katniss\/Peeta (which is what makes me love it) out almost entirely. So the deconstruction of those aspects in the books got completely lost, and as always, I loved the deconstructive bits the best.

*clings to books* I should also write down my thoughts on the deconstructive elements of the books before I get distracted by something shinier.

<\/a>



I also saw "Avengers," which was fun. But I really have no deep thoughts on it because it wasn't exactly a deep movie. It is possible my feelings towards Joss are getting in the way? I have no idea. I really enjoyed it, loved Black Widow, predictably. Iron Man and Pepper Potts made me happy, I was bored by Captain America, and the logic fail of the Hulk arc was kind of...annoying. But I have since then been told that it apparently made sense if I had bothered to remember the Hulk movie. Which, admittedly, I don't remember.

Mostly, this has renewed my vague interest in reading the Avenger comics. I am still primarily interested in the Wanda and Pietro era, because well, SUBTEXT.

And I need to hunt down some Black Widow comics. I had started reading Marvel Max's "Black Widow" comics forever ago, and have no idea why I stopped because they were pretty damn awesome.

I did want to say that I *loved* Black Widow using the appearance of vulnerablity as a weapon, and her switching from that was awesome EVERY SINGLE TIME. HI, I have a thing for heroines who use people's flawed perception of femininity as a weapon against them. And heroines who are aware of PERFORMING a role and do it delibrately for their own ends. <3

Feel free to rec Black Widow comics in the comments. You guys, it's been so long that I have forgotten how I used to make lists of comics to read after discovering a shiny new heroine. This is sort of sad.

<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:125591","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/125591.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=125591"}}],"title":"Tentative Wiscon Schedule","published":"2012-05-22T03:07:03Z","updated":"2014-07-12T06:43:47Z","content":"I'll be getting there on Thursday, around 4pmish, and leaving on Monday, around 3pmish. I am sufficiently recovered from my cold that my plan, once again, is to attend too many panels and parties and neveeeeeer sleep.

Asterisks by the ones I will be PUSHING PEOPLE OUT OF THE WAY to get into. Everything else will depend on who else is going and what else is going on. There are probably things that are VERY INTERESTING that I have missed. Feel free to tell me about them.

At some point between the panels, there are also plans to have an unofficial panel with <\/a>chaila<\/b><\/a><\/span> and others about fiction's portrayal of women with power." At some point, there will also be "The Inside" watching with <\/a>aphrodite_mine<\/b><\/a><\/span>.


Friday

*4:00 pm - The Pregnancy Trope in SF TV Shows<\/a> -
9:00 pm - Chicks Dig Comics<\/a> -
*9:00 pm - My Shepard: Avatars, Subversion and Identity in Video Games<\/a> -
9:00 -YA Love Triangles<\/a> -
10:30 - Women in Superhero Films<\/a> -
10:30 - A Conscious Internet: Should We Be Worried?<\/a> -

Vid party at some point before it ends at 3 am. It's not like sleeping is on the schedule.

Saturday
8:30 am - Women in Comics<\/a> -
10:00 am - The Powerless Heroine<\/a> -

This is probably going to be the HARDEST decision to make:
*1:00 pm - The Arab\/Muslim "East" in SF<\/a> -
OR
*1:00 pm - Performing Katniss in Print and On Screen: Gender Performativity and Deconstructing Reality TV in The Hunger Games<\/a> - Pretty much everything I find most interesting about the books, minus the reality tv part, where I still have ZERO interest, even if it's, you know, deconstruction.
1:00 pm - Sensational Women of the 16th Century<\/a> -
2:30 pm - Considering the Female Villain<\/a> -
4:00 pm - Girl Cooties: Considering the Romance Novel<\/a> - My main interest in this one is the fact that <\/a>meganbmoore<\/b><\/a><\/span> will be on this panel.

9:00 pm - Intersection of Trans* and Feminism<\/a> -
10:30 pm - Women of the Horror Film: The Devilish Fears, 1971–1976<\/a> -

Sunday
8:30 am - Gender-Variant Characters in SF<\/a> -
8:30 am - Heteronormativity in YA Dystopian SF<\/a> -
10:00 am - "But it's not for girls!"<\/a> -
10:00 am - Feminism and the YA Explosion<\/a> -
*1:00 pm - Disappearing Natives: The Colonized Body is Monstrous \/ Darwin and the Digital Body: Evolution, the Posthuman, and Imaginative Spaces of Embodiment<\/a> -
2:30 pm - Baba Yaga and Other Retired\/Secret Goddesses<\/a> -
*4:00 pm - The Disenfranchised Other: Race and Its Role in Female-Driven Fantasy<\/a> -
*4:00 pm - Gender and Class in Gaming<\/a> - AKA THE DRAGON AGE PANEL.

Monday
8:30 am - Responding to the Literary Canon<\/a> -"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:123861","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/123861.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=123861"}}],"title":" \u201cRevenge\u201d and why you should be watching it. ","published":"2012-02-10T23:53:15Z","updated":"2014-07-12T06:57:36Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"victoria grayson"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"emily throne"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"rec"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"revenge"}}],"content":"I keep meaning to talk about Revenge<\/i>, but I am just a flaily, squee-filled mess at the end of each episode, which makes it hard to plug it in an intelligent manner that it deserves.  Before I start a list of why this show is making everything else currently on TV seem drab in comparison, I offer the following disclaimer:

Dear World, I have a huge thing for revenge narratives, as long as they're being headed by women.  I have been obsessed with Medea since middle school, and my instant love for heroines willing to make the world PAY for what it did to them has never, ever lessened even a bit.  And the more I consume fiction where women are supposed to forgive, forget, move on, the more this love grows. Be it the “Roaring Rampage of Revenge” kind or the "Better Served Cold" type, from The Oresteia<\/i> to Kill Bill<\/i>, I have probably loved them all.

Revenge<\/i> opens with the following Chinese proverb, “He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.”  This is a huge part of why I love revenge narratives, because um, HI WORLD, I have a thing for obsessive, self-destructive heroines.  I also have a thing for stoic heroines who keep their emotions and issues buried so deeply that you almost believe they don’t have any until everything threatens to come crashing down. And I love morally ambiguous older women in positions of power. This show gives me all of this with Bechdel passing and a pretty solid script.

Based loosely on Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo<\/i>, Revenge<\/i> updates this story and reimagines it with a woman as its protagonist. When she was a young girl, Amanda Clarke’s father was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, a conspiracy that a large number of people in the Hamptons seem to have been in on.  In the pilot, Amanda, now calling herself Emily Throne (and referred to as such by the rest of this review), returns to the Hamptons and starts working on making herself an important part of the community so she can take it apart from the inside.

Heading Emily’s list of people who need to be brought down is Victoria Grayson, the queen of the Hamtons’ social circle, the woman her father loved and who betrayed him. However, things aren’t as simple as Emily’s single-minded quest for vengeance has led her to believe, and this show does particularly well with developing multiple points of view and letting us see different sides to the story we initially get from Emily.

Stereotype-breaking complex characterization of morally ambiguous women is especially what makes me love this show. It pulls no punches in Emily’s hardcoreness, and even as I find myself surprised by the depths to which she's willing to sink, I find myself falling more and more in love with her, and just being FLAILY over her awesome, awesome BRAIN.  It’s taken Emily years to work her plan into perfection and as more and more of it unravels, it’s fascinating to see the layers being added to her characterization, even as she remains incredibly chilling and creepy in her pursuit.

And then there's Victoria Grayson, who, like Emily, maintains a horde of her own secrets, keeping a perfect façade in place as the decides the fate of others in the community and in her life.  She's wonderfully complex, manipulative and vulnerable in turns.  She is easily the most sympathetically developed character in the entire series, and I love how this show is spending so much time on developing the complexity of its primary antagonist. We don’t yet know the reasons for which Victoria did what she did, but we’ve been provided with enough information to find her sympathetic and to know that she had her reasons, which is quite a feat. Most importantly, this show is firmly focused on characterization as its primary concern, and while maintaining plot suspense is something it does very well, it never sacrifices characterization to service plot twists\/suspense.

The way these two women manipulate their environments and the people around them -- the ones they're using for their own gains and especially the ones they love -- is ridiculously fun to watch.  They aren’t the only women in the show, or the only ones central to the arc, but they are, predictably, the ones most pertinent to my own interests. Emily, who has dedicated so much of her life to vengeance that she can’t do anything but finish what she started, and Victoria, who is wonderfully complex, sympathetic, and unwillingly to give up any of her power, are both being developed in complex, parallel arcs, and I can’t wait to see where their journeys lead.

So, in conclusion, WATCH THIS SHOW."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:121723","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/121723.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=121723"}}],"title":"More on fandom and slash, this time with STATS and numbers. ","published":"2011-12-08T00:57:21Z","updated":"2014-07-12T07:03:12Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"more femslash now please"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"slash"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"statistics"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fanfiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fandom"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"femslash"}}],"content":"Over the weekend, someone was arguing with me over how slash is really a small subsection of fandom and isn't really the new fandom majority. I know from experience that that's not true, but could not find any stats. But then it occured to me that a good way to break down the numbers would be to search for these cateories on AO3 and analyzing the numbers that get returned.

I think AO3 is a good archive for this sort of research because FFN has been around for a very long time, but slash proliferation has mostly occursed in the last ten years or so. So AO3 is a good reflection of current trends.

Here are the numbers, mostly so I can link people to this when this happens again.

Femslash: 1930 fics. (14.8%)
Het: 2167 fics. (16.6%)
Slash: 8924 fics. (68.5%)

So slash amounts to more than twice the amont of femslash AND het put together, as indicated by the authors in their fics' keywords, which ends up being nearly 70% of the relationship-tagged fic. Those percentages don't exactly add up to 100% because I rounded to the nearest single digit after the decimal, so there's about a 0.01% discrepency there.

I am also interested in how femslash and het amounts to roughly the sameish percent. I don't want to draw conclusions here, but in my experience, women-positive readers are equally open to het and femslash? But I also wonder if the results are not entirely accurate because I...would've expected het to have been significantly more prominent than femslash.

Then I did a search for terms m\/m, f\/m, and f\/f, and results are a bit better, but still show slash outnumbering both by a good margin. Percentages rounded to the nearest second digit after the decimal because I apparently have no respect for consistency:

M\/M: 165554 fics. (58.97%)
F\/F: 62341 fics. (22.20%)
M\/F: 52832 fics. (18.82%)

And here femslash outnumbers het, so I really am wondering about these numbers and would love some insight. Of course, this does not include gen fic, and it probably includes fic that has both or has one or the other as a secondary ship, but unfortunately, there's no way to filter for that that I know of. But this still presents a rough estimate, I suppose.

Are there other archives\/communities where I can do this sort of data collection, friendslist? Feel free to post numbers from ficathons and archives you're familiar with in the comments. I would love some more data on this.

ALSO! These numbers make me want to have a "Raise the Percentage" femslash ficathon. Because, you know, it'd be awesome if we could.

In other news, I see that my last post has gotten linked on tumblr and is being taken out of context and apparently, I was complaining about m\/m relationships in fiction (I was not.)  When it was mostly about how the only role women seem to have in most popular narratives is to be the romantic interests. I think it's a good thing that fandom, in general, has gotten less homophobic, but it would be lovely if we could see some of that come out without an exclusive preference for white male characters and if some of that led to femslash.

Dear fandom, reading\/writing fanfiction that turns white, heterosexual men into gay men while ignoring and writing out women and people of color is, in fact, not primarily about gay rights or feminism, no matter what you tell yourself. We can talk about intersectionality of slash fiction when, you know, slash starts being about people other than pretty, white heterosexual men with positions of power and agency within their own narratives. Or, you know, when femslash isn't something you actively have to hunt down. Meanwhile, I'll continue to see the proliferation of slash (and not slash as a genre itself) as a manifestation of how patriarchal narratives train women (and men!) to mostly care about and identify with (white!) male characters while writing women and people of color out.

Honestly, other than the actual sex, it's not very different from early American fiction? Which, in fact, was interpreted as subtextually homoerotic for its deep bonds between men and no presence of women by Leslie Fiedler, who was then happily shunned from the literary society of his day. So the only thing that's changed is that fandom isn't afraid of sex or homoeroticism, while the rest of the society (and most notably Hollywood) hasn't progressed much beyond early American fiction where women still continue to be marginalized in almost all but the romance-centric narratives. Which pretty much means that the ONLY thing a lot of fiction needs women for is, well, sex. \/bitter"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:119745","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/119745.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=119745"}}],"title":"Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, and gold-diggers\/shallow women. ","published":"2011-10-03T22:43:08Z","updated":"2014-07-14T01:52:34Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"elizabeth bennet"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gold-diggers"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"northanger abbey"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"jane austen"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pride and prejudice"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"isabella thrope"}}],"content":"I binged on the 1995 version of "Pride and Prejudice" with Heather this weekend, which is one of my favorite movies\/books, not least because it's immensely enjoyable and fun (as opposed to my usual leanings towards doom and gloom fiction). But one thing that leaves me really uncomfortable with the ending is Lydia being married to Wickham. She's what...16, at MOST, at the end of the book? That's not nearly old enough to be getting punished so harshly for the choices she made at such a young age. I understand that an average 16-year-old woman in the 19th century was probably more mature than an average 16-year-old today, but Lydia is still the youngest of the sisters, which almost necessarily means that she's been spoiled (by her mother, whom I also don't blame. I mostly just *really* dislike Mr. Bennet.) and been allowed to shirk responsibility and I think that while Jane and Elizabeth are responsible, she was somehow allowed to be more under Mrs. Bennet's wing, and I think a large part of that is that no one is really expecting her to end up being married or with any sort of responsibility for a long while yet.

But with a husband like Wickham, Lydia is going to learn some harsh lessons very quickly. Not just in terms of his cheating, but he is going to gamble everything away, and I don't think Lydia would much like being poor or socially disgraced and shunned, which they will be within the year with Wickham's general assholery. In Lydia's case, it doesn't even seem like she's being actively punished as much as Austen just went "They're both shallow and kind of deserve each other." Which, well. Wickham is someone who is willfully malicious and deceptive by design, while Lydia's biggest crime is being thoughtless and shallow...at the ripe old age of SIXTEEN. As opposed to Isabella Thrope from "Northanger Abbey," (whom I adore, BTW), who actually actively drops a well-off man to go after a much richer one with the intentions of marrying up. Isabella's ending is another one that makes me really uncomfortable. Of course, when we leave her at the end of the book, her future is uncertain, but we know enough to know that she's not headed for a good one. And I feel iffy about the conversation between Henry and Catherine that pretty much says that Isabella got what she deserved and\/or invited her doom by being ambitious.

This yuletide, one of the things I am most looking forward to asking for is some Isabella fanfic, where she finds her happy ending and satisfies her gold-digging tendencies. Possibly with even Captain Tilney, because I sort of like the idea of her ending up with someone who *knows* she's a gold-digger, but doesn't care. I might have to reread to see how much I actually hate Captain Tilney and if he could be redeemed. I'll never understand how gold-digging in women is somehow WORSE than men wanting to marry pretty girls in these period romances. Both equally shallow (although one is VERY practical and ambitious, and understandable in an era when women don't have career options, and marriage was, in a way, their 'career.'), but somehow, since beauty is a part of you, he really is in love with YOU. As opposed to wealth, which is an external thing. OTBH, I have no idea how this works. Except that all our narratives are from the Male POV so women wanting something out of men and going after it makes everyone freak out, while men can do whatever and it's fine because that's who most people are going to be identifying with. Sigh.

While the "Pride and Prejudice" movie did not cover this part (do any versions cover this part?), and I actually generally love all the bits of interaction that take place between Lizzie and Darcy after the engagement, my only issue with their entire romance narrative takes place during a conversation between the two of them. Elizabeth asks Mr. Darcy what first attracted him to her, to which, he has no specific answer. So she proceeds to analyze his feelings thusly, "The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking, and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused, and interested you, because I was so unlike them."

Now, I like the first part of the conversation (not quoted here), where you get the impression that he loves her because she was snarky to him (he insists that it was for the "liveliness of her mind," which I adore!). And I generally like het romances where the man has to do the emotional work because the woman is either emotionally unavailable\/distant\/unstable or just plain not interested, in which case, the guy actually has to respect her wishes and back-off (as Mr. Darcy does) when she asks , because other wise, it goes into a creepy territory. So Lizzie\/Darcy kind of push all kinds of shipping buttons for me. But this second bit, where Elizabeth sort of...somehow puts the other women down, makes me a bit iffy because it really brings to attention the weird double standard of the Romantic Period, especially when compared to the treatment of Isabella. A successful woman is she who marries well...but the only one who *deserves* to marry well is the one who doesn't actually *want* wealth. So you have a culture that encourages women to find a rich husband that also actually looks down on women for trying to find a well-off husband. This is so...messed up, and how does that even WORK? So Elizabeth is deserving of all this happiness because this is not the happiness she desired, but Isabella, who wants wealth and fortune and actually WORKS for it, deserves to be disgraced and punished. Now, of course, I love Elizabeth dearly and she is probably one of my favorite heroines in all of literature, so I am not putting her down in any way. But...Isabella amuses me greatly, and she's so...deceptive and artful and works SO hard for what she wants that I just...really, really can't help but want her to get her rich husband, who also happens to love her. And as always, I am bothered by how fiction endorses the happiness of a certain kind of woman while denying that to the more unconventional women.

I kind of wish I remembered more of "Mansfield Park" so I could talk about the gold-digger character in there? But as it is, I can't even remember her name, but I do know that there is apparently one and that a lot of you hate her treatment in the text.

So there you have it, more of my issues with Austen and gold-digging\/shallow women. One day, I'll know exactly what I think of it in the light of all the things I love about Jane Austen, given that heroines like Elizabeth *were* unconventional back then, and a heroine like Emma Woodhouse is still insanely hard to find even today. But until then, you're all doomed to see these random thoughts as they occur.

In other news, I see that there's a book about Lydia Bennet giving her a happy ending. I am ambivalent on the reviews, but I think I might get it. If only "Northanger Abbey" were popular enough for such a thing to exist for Isabella..."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:119489","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/119489.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=119489"}}],"title":"Gender, Fantasy, and the Women of Dragon Age. ","published":"2011-09-09T00:30:01Z","updated":"2019-04-15T03:35:16Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"women being awesome"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"morrigan"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"anora"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"isabela"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"bechdel test pass"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"game of thrones"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"dragon age"}}],"content":"At some point, I was avoiding LJ\/fandom because of the fail, and then I got busy and forgot to post. A lot. But I have been randomly consuming various media, and having thoughts, but mostly too distracted to post. One of the things I kept telling myself I would definitely post about was \"Game of Thrones.\" Which I have been both watching and reading. (And still plan to post thoughts on the difference between the two renditions of Cersei at some point.) Because! Cersei! And Dani! And how epic the first season was, mostly because my brain automatically assumed that CLEARLY, the trajectory of the series is Cersei vs. Dani in an epic all-out war for the throne, YES OR YES?

Well, I read some of the books, and while I can't say that's not where it's headed with certainty, there's enough misogyny and gender fail that I very, very much doubt that it will ever go there. Or go there before Cersei and\/or Dani are horribly traumatized in gendered ways. Still, I kept reading because I do so love these women, and I do love the creepy dark world the series has created. And have I mentioned my thing for power struggles?

And then someone recced \"Dragon Age: Origins\" to me based mostly on my love for Claudia Black's incredible voice, where Claudia Black plays a character written for me. So I start \"Dragon Age,\" entirely for Morrigan, only to discover that it's created a world very close to \"Game of Thrones,\" with a similar power struggle, demons, dragons, witches, and a whole religion built around a female-Christ figure which is headed by female priests.

\"Dragon Age\" is darker and more brutal than \"Game of Thrones\" in many ways, but it manages this without the blatant misogyny that plagues the world of \"A Song of Ice and Fire.\" The intro blurb tells me that in Ferelden (the fictional country in which the first game is set) men and women enjoy roughly the same social status, and there are few instances in the game that make me question that. Women serve as head of militia, head of the palace guard, preside over their Chantry, rule as queens, and their background history\/mythology is filled with hardcore women who changed their world.

The first game is set in Ferelden, which is being overrun by a demonic blight that occurs every few centuries in response to certain cosmic events. The only people who can end the Blight are the Grey Wardens, which is an Order of warriors with 'demonic taint' that enables them to sense the demons and kill them. Besides the Blight, the struggling country is also dealing with a power struggle brought on by the death of its King, which led to certain factions rebelling against the ruling Queen and the government. Said queen is pretty hardcore is willing to be all Machiavellian in order to keep her crown, and the game wants me to like her! And the open-ended nature of the game actually lets you decide her fate, which never turns out too badly, anyway.

The protagonist, who happens to be one of the only two remaining Grey Wardens, and her (or his) companions have to unite different factions of the country\/world in order to defeat the demonic blight. But all of that is kind of irrelevant, because the strength of the games are their characters, and especially their women. The second game\u2019s heroine is a Fereldan refugee who escaped to Kirkwall when the Blight started. It follows her from a refugee to becoming a major power player in the new city and leading to another power struggle that sets the scene for future games.

Furthermore, it's almost as if someone is trying to break types with the heroines. We have a Chantry Sister who happens to be bisexual and a hardcore ass-kicking ninja, but it's revealed in layers so it seems entirely natural and in keeping with her character. We have the powerful Witch of the Wilds, who is at once the most cynical and most naively innocent character. There's Isabela, with her angsty backstory and a million reasons to be bitter and jaded, who refuses to let anything get in the way of enjoying life to its fullest. And various other women, who talk to each other! Even if you choose to have your player character be a man, the women in the party will initiate and carry on conversations with each other. And if your player character is a female (as it should be!), then it's an epic Bechdel passing marvel at every point.

And now that I am done squeeing over the world of Dragon Age, let me talk a bit about the women of Dragon Age...SO I MAY CONVERT THE MASSES.



Morrigan<\/b>, voiced by Claudia Black, is predictably my favorite character in the \"Dragon Age\" universe. Antagonist and sarcastic, Morrigan is a powerful witch who is pushed out into the world for the first time as a result of the premise of the game. She is the daughter of the legendary witch Flemeth and was raised by her alone in a tiny cabin in the wilds. Morrigan's only interaction with normal human beings has been observing them while shapeshifting into animals and being hunted by Templars for being a witch. She is distrustful of humans, and her relationship to everything and everyone is calculated based on how much power it can grant her. Watching her form lasting bonds and being torn between her upbringing and her emerging humanity is one of the most rewarding aspects of the game because, HI, I have a type. She can be romanced by a male protagonist, but I recommend installing a patch that lets you romance her as a female protagonist because she is probably the most difficult and fun romance option. Morrigan character trailer<\/a> that Bioware put out. Watch it if only to hear Claudia Black's voice. ;)


Anora<\/b>, the Machiavellian queen who rules with an iron fist, she came to power upon her marriage to the young king of Fereleden. The entire universe knows that Anora is the one ruling the country and mostly, everyone who doesn't have eyes on the throne, is pretty damn okay with it because she is much better at it than their king would have been. It's heavily implied that she was pretty much raised to rule as queen and run the country because even while he was young, no one really expected the crown prince to be very good at it. She enjoys ruling and the power she has and will CUT YOU if you try to take it away. Sadly, she is not a character you can recruit to help on your missions (I mean, she has a frakking country to run while an apocalypse is looming on the horizon!), but she does play a prominent part and the game allows you a fair bit of interaction with her depending on your choices.

Leliana<\/b>, the awesome nunja who drools over shoes and shopping in between spreading the word of the Maker. She's made up of many contradictions and absolutely adorable. I really can't talk much about her without giving away spoilers. She's first introduced as a Chantry Sister, who has been sent a vision by the Maker to follow the protagonist on her\/his mission to stop the apocalypse, and aspects of her past are slowly revealed over the course of the game. She also clearly has a crush on Morrigan and hits on her happily, making me ship them forever. She can be romanced by a female or a male protagonist. Here's a nice character trailer for her<\/a>.

Isabela<\/b>, the ridiculously fun pirate who loves shiny things and lots of sex, makes me question my OTC devotion to Morrigan. She is easily the funnest character in the games, with one of the most angsty back stories, which you only get to hear if you make certain decisions when interacting with her. She reminds me a lot of Vala Mal Doran, another one of my favorite characters whose sexuality is portrayed in a positive manner and who is ALSO A PIRATE. She makes a small cameo in \"Dragon Age: Origins\" where we find out that she is the Captain of a pirate ship who has never been beaten in a duel and people much bigger and stronger and powerful than her come from all over to learn her awesome skills. In \"Dragon Age II,\" she has been stranded in Kirkwall after having been shipwrecked in events that become clear over the course of the game. She might be stuck in a city without her fellow pirates, but that doesn't mean that she can't still go around stealing things, breaking into people's houses, and having lots of sex with both men and women. If you play as a female protagonist, Isabel femslash romance is one of the funnest things ever. YOU GUYS, the foreplay consists of them removing knives from each other's bodies\/clothes, and it is SO EPIC. <3 (Clip<\/a> where Isabela complains about having ONLY THREE daggers on her when she\u2019s naked.)

Bethany<\/b>: The younger mage sister of \"Dragon Age II\"'s protagonist, Bethany is incredibly sweet, idealistic, and snarky when you least expect it. In a world where mages are hunted and taken from their families to be raised in a prison-like Circle, Bethany's powers are hidden by her family so they can keep her from being taken. I became overly attached to her as my protagonist was a girl, and have I mentioned my thing for sisters in fiction? Anyway, the relationship between the sisters is one of the most awesome things in the games, and depending on certain choices you make, it comes in many varied flavors. I also, oddly enough, find Bethany to be the most shippable character. She's like Kitty Pryde in that, where she is the character you would least expect to ship based on her canon romance options, but somehow, she has subtext with EVERYONE. Depending on choices you make, Bethany may also turn quite bitter and jaded, which somehow, just makes her more shippable.

Merril<\/b>, the naive elf who is out in the world for the first time. She's incredibly cute and clueless, and it's fun to watch her miss every single one of Isabela's innuendo-ladened jokes, which are not really subtle. She also happens to be a mage who dabbles in dark blood magic, which is shown to be one of the most dangerous things in the game. She is one of the only ones who can control it without losing herself to it, which I really appreciated in how it contradicts her initial introduction as a naive girl who needs to be protected.

Lastly, Aveline<\/b> is the captain of the city guard and is, like, the legal version of the goddamn Batman. She\u2019s hardcore and has a very black and white sense of morality initially. She can be a bit judgmental, but usually comes through in the end. Her initial interaction with Isabela starts out iffy, but I appreciate that by the end of the game, she clearly values Isabela\u2019s friendship\/viewpoint and has come to respect her. And I love that Isabela teases her, but is never offended by her view of her. Wait, this was supposed to be squeeing over Aveline and not Isabela, right? ;)

And that doesn\u2019t even cover all of the female companion characters, and there are various powerful, interesting, creepy, and scary women that you come across throughout the game.

<\/a>

At some point, there was a controversy in fandom where male fans of the game were complaining that games (and the women in it) weren't written to appeal to men, and how the game didn't care about the straight male audience. To which, the creator said:

The romances in the game are not for \"the straight male gamer\". They're for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention. ...And if there is any doubt why such an opinion might be met with hostility, it has to do with privilege. You can write it off as \"political correctness\" if you wish, but the truth is that privilege always lies with the majority. They're so used to being catered to that they see the lack of catering as an imbalance.<\/i><\/blockquote>

Which...just compare this to Joe Quesada pretty much saying that women and people of color might as well drop comics because he'll never cater to them."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:119283","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/119283.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=119283"}}],"title":"X-men: First Class Review - thoughts on gender and the women. ","published":"2011-06-04T04:19:23Z","updated":"2014-07-12T07:20:35Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"emma frost"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"mystique"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"reviews."}},{"@attributes":{"term":"comics"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"x-men: first class"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"moira mactaggert"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"magneto"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"x-men"}}],"content":"So, I went to see X-men: First Class last night because apparently, when it's not being marred by my disdain for Wolverine, Emma Frost's appearance in a movie is just as much of a draw for me as one would expect. Friendslist, have I mentioned lately how much I love Emma Frost? And how I wish I could grow up to be her? And how she's the one who started me down the path of my love affair with Machiavellian Women in Charge? Because, yes, all of that. So as one would expect, I fully expected to post a squee filled entry talking about my love of Emma Frost and her epic hardcore awesomeness.

Except, I'm not. The beauty of Emma Frost is that she exists exactly where the line between Machiavellian Woman in Charge crosses over with Femme Fatale, which doesn't happen often because the latter is usually seen as a type who secretly manipulates people to have her way, but never really wants power openly. Emma is happy to play the femme fatale for the end results, but her goal is always to be in power. So what happens when you take power out of that equation? Something very unfortunate, of course. Emma gets reduced to her sexuality, which is something the comics have been guilty of lately.

Despite that, the movie starts out well. The Magneto backstory is compelling, but I might be biased because Magneto is possibly my favorite male character in all of X-men. The team dynamics are good, and not all about, you know, Wolverine. I was shipping everyone with everyone else, and squeeing, and happy, and thinking "OMG, this is the best X-men movie yet," and then we hit halfway point, Emma Frost left my screen, and gave me time to focus on the bigger picture. Where they wrote out all the woman from Plot A so we could focus on the Big Boys playing war games and directing politics. Where women apparently have no place.




As much as I love action girls, I feel that it's possibly easier to develop them as awesome characters because, um, you just give them guns and have them do action-y things. This is also ridiculously easy to do with me because, hi, women with guns may be my biggest visual kink. But to develop a heroine who is more intellectually inclined as a powerful figure, I think, possibly requires a lot more actual time spent on writing her and developing her character. Which, clearly, this movie couldn't be bothered with, and I suspect this is largely why Moira MacTaggert is now a CIA agent and not a DNA researcher who helped Xavier develop his theories. I did not come to this conclusion until after I had processed my thoughts on Mystique and Emma because I was distracted by the hottness of Rose Bryne shooting people. But ultimately, I think I would have preferred a Moira who was instrumental in developing the mutant rights movement and developing theories that led to them being discovered. This Moira would have had a place among mutants even after the ending of the movie. Instead, we got a Moira who needs Xavier to give validation to her career\/arc. And then someone made a joke about how women shouldn't be in the CIA. Which would have been funny if this movie had actually HAD women in power positions that it didn't write out of the A plot, but it didn't so not so ironic?

Speaking of which, there's the criminal underuse of Mystique and Emma. One of the things I did like early on and was really curious about was the friendship between Xavier and Mystique, and I looked forward to seeing it develop, but it was almost entirely dropped as anything with a significant impact on Xavier's life as soon as Magneto walked into the picture. Mystique possibly has a half-crush on Xavier, identity issues, and much bitterness directed towards humans, but instead of using them to give us an early Mystique who is compelling and clearly developing ideas of her own that are different from Xavier's, Mystique somehow got reduced to being with the first class and grouped with the kids instead of being treated like an adult. This was possibly the biggest failing of the movie given how compelling Mystique in the later (earlier?!) movies is. I was also annoyed by how much of Mystique self-worth is discovered through Magneto finding her worthy (hi, Hemminway plot of female discovering her self-worth!). And I'm not sure that the movie gave me enough for me to want to believe that Mystique would just leave with Magneto. Xavier's subtle rejection of Mystique's mutation is used as something to motivate Mystique to find Magneto interesting, instead of being used to show Xavier's failings. I wanted to see her developing her own ideas, making her decisions, instead of just arbitrarily picking a side without the conflict of metaphorically betraying her best friend.

I'm also incredibly disturbed by the unfortunate implications about Mystique's relationship with Xavier when this movie is put in context with the rest of the franchise. Somehow, over a decade of friendship with Mystique is not worth mentioning, but we'll based all the Bromance conflict between Xavier and Magneto on a friendship that likely lasted less than a year? I possibly wanted to see this whole arc develop over a few movies, and not just wasted in one movie, where everything sort of felt hollow because of the rush.

Within the context of the movie, I can't help but resent Xavier for being all "OMG, BFFS, must develop mutant utopia!" with Magneto with emphasis on how he never thought he would find someone to do that with? Because he apparently didn't find Mystique worthy of that position? Perhaps not so much his fault as the writing's, but this is repeated in the dynamic developed between Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw.

Firstly, I sort of disliked the grouping of Hellfire Club's agenda and Magneto's agenda as one and the same. From my understanding, Hellfire Club is sort of an independent agent that's more interested in personal gain for its members than looking out for the interests of mutants at large. (Actually...someone please remind me if Hellfire Club has non-mutant members? I seem to remember they do, but it's been a while...) I think Emma in the comics goes through a progress from this to becoming more invested in the future of mutantkind, but either way, it's a very different entity and interesting because of that.

Secondly, the first X-men comic I ever read is the one that introduces Emma Frost, because it incidentally happened to be the one that also introduced Kitty Pryde, which was the reason I was reading comics in the first place. I did not start fangirling Emma till years later, so I approached her initially with an unbiased opinion. I mention this because I have seen some people defending the fail of the Emma Frost plot by saying that it accurately reflects the Hellfire Club dynamic that was initially set up. Brushing aside the weird gender dynamics of the 80s, I understood Emma and Shaw to be somewhat equals in the Hellfire club. And while Shaw may have been outwardly in charge, Emma very much seemed the person manipulating everything for her own personal gain. So to see Emma reduced here to playing second fiddle to Shaw, who seems to be in control, was largely insulting to a character that I sort of see as the definition of HBIC. Yes, she's obviously resentful, but I *fully* expected that resentment to lead to an actual confrontation where Shaw gets owned by her for daring to treat her as he does. But then Emma gets written out while attempting to protect Shaw's interest and we don't hear from her till the end of the movie. Couldn't I at least have gotten a hint that she sold Shaw out on purpose and planned his doom? And the ending doesn't leave me hope for her regaining her White Queen status because apparently, now she'll be supporting Magneto's agenda.

I am also very annoyed that the one bit of extended telepathy we see her use is to sexually manipulate a person, which plays more into playing up her sexuality while reducing her agency\/power. Emma can easily manipulate him into thinking whatever she wants him to, and if she *were* going to use her powers to fulfill his sexual fantasy, she really didn't need to take off her clothes? Which leads us to the scene of Magneto using the bed frame to trap her, and just, sigh. Emma Frost? Would fucking freeze his brain before he got there. I also ENJOY Emma sort of manipulating people to her ends without moving a finger, so her having the diamond form here and engaging in actual battle seemed to reduce that. However, if they were going to use Diamond form, why can't Emma use that to actually kick some X-men ass? Because this movie is not interested in giving her any power. Or an agenda of her own.

So by the halfway point, Mystique is hanging out with the kids, Emma has been imprisoned, which left Magneto and Xavier to go after Shaw. How fucking predictable. Moira helped, but she's human, so she's also kept from playing power games. Incidentally, Moira in the comics is one of the characters I appreciate immensely because she's a HUMAN who gets to be a power player in the mutant world, but there's no sign of that here.

Also, as much as I love Magneto in general, his strangling both Emma and Moira in an attempt to kill her actually kind of reminded me of the fail antics Damon constantly pulls. This possibly killed all my love for Magneto in this version.

As much as I ship Magneto\/Xavier in theory, I found the Bromance vibe here to be largely distasteful, and I was especially annoyed by the scene of them trying to recruit Angel at the strip club. Charles' condescending "How would you like a job where you get to keep your clothes on" made me want to punch him a lot. It doesn't help that Angel is also played by an actress of color and it possibly played into all the fail of that intersectionality. Also, she was the first to turn against Xavier's dream, and again...without much of a development as to why she made this decision.

It occurs to me that I was pretty happy with the movie as long as Emma Frost was on my screen. But once she went away, I had to find other things to occupy my interest, which happened to be meta level gender analysis. See, this is why I'm generally happy with things as long as they treat my favorites well. So, really, in theory, I'm not all that hard to please. If only fiction could write women as people whose narratives mattered...<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:118767","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/118767.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=118767"}}],"title":"book meme, and well, BOOKS! <3","published":"2011-03-05T03:05:48Z","updated":"2014-07-12T07:25:49Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"women are awesome"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"books"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"medea"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"epic heroines"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"book recs"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"literary heroines"}}],"content":"
I spontaneously decided to rearrange my bookshelf and am in the middle of it, and then saw a book meme, very appropriately.  I may be late for World Book Day, but oh, well:<\/div>
The book I am reading:<\/strong>
"A Conspiracy of Kings" by Megan Whalen Turner, mostly, but I also got distracted by "The Cult of the Divine Birth in Ancient Greece" by Marguerite Rigoglioso, which Amazon sent me today.  YOU GUYS, THE RESEARCH IN THIS BOOK!  *dies* <\/div>

The book I am writing: <\/strong>
While not quite writing,  I'm kind of outlining\/playing with the idea of retelling Classical myths with  goddesses from their POVs, giving them more positive\/empowering motivations (and f\/f interaction!) than canon does, but in a format where it's kind of one long epic story containing many interconnected stories.  Something like I did with the Hera and Athena story for Yuletide, but more extensive, and involving the whole pantheon. <\/div>
The book(s) I love most: <\/strong><\/div>
I know people have been passing on this one, but I shall use this opportunity to squee over some of my favorites...the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but I'm sure there are more:

"A Lost Lady" by Willa Cather  -<\/strong> This book does something that I have never seen done half as well anywhere else:  it lovingly deconstructs the Courtly Love genre in such a way that I both WANT MORE OF IT and totally HATE IT FOR THE FAIL.  It's epic.  And the heroine!  <3  Possibly my favorite classic literary heroine ever. <\/div>
"The Descent of Inanna" <\/strong>- So, I have a thing for ancient stories, and this is one of the oldest extant texts we have, so that alone makes me love it.  But!  It is the ORIGINAL descent narrative!  With the woman going on the epic journey, even though it sort of became the domain of male heroes in myth later on.  I love how powerful she is, and how much the text focuses on her sexuality and desire for power, and it's all done so positively.  And the poetry is some of the most powerful I have read, and it makes me want to believe in these stories. <\/div>
"Medea" by Euripides<\/strong> - Ancient Greek play about one woman sticking it to the Patriarchy exactly where it hurts the most.  And getting away with it.  Okay, fine, Medea may be my favorite literary heroine ever. <\/div>
<\/strong><\/div>
"Beloved" by Toni Morrison<\/strong> -  The Medea myth transformed to the Old South, where the same act of defiance is seen as a form of rebelling against slavery, and this book is just so...gah.  Perfect.  I love Medea as a hardcore creepy heroine?  But this is the book that makes me understand her as a human being because Sethe is so vividly drawn, so scary, but so incredibly human.  And the complex, nuanced relationships between the women are unlike any in canon literature. It's entirely possible she's my favorite literary heroine?  ;) <\/div>
"The Season of Passage" by Christopher Pike<\/strong> -  One of my earliest favorites and despite all of Christopher Pike's fail since then and my issues with parts of it, this remains one of my favorite stories.  Of course...I haven't read it in a while, and TBH, I'm kind of afraid to?  But it's a perfect mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and horror with epic characters. <\/div>
Jane Austen!<\/strong> Because I can't pick between "Emma" and "Pride and Prejudice."  I think I like "Emma" better on a critical level in terms of REALLY appreciating what Austen is doing with her heroine?  But I think P&P is closer to my heart for various reasons, not least of which is the household dynamic with the SISTERS (<3) and the non-faily romance elements, though they're not quite deconstructive.

It occurs to me that a few years ago, this list would have definitely included things like "The Iliad" and "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and even "The Great Gatsby?"  But I'm so much less impressed with stories about men these days.   "A Lost Lady" is pretty much a more female centric version of "The Great Gatsby," and so closer to my heart, and Inanna and Medea are funner than Gilgamesh and Achilles, as much as I love Achilles. <\/div>
The last book I received as a gift: <\/strong>
Nancy Drew and Christopher Pike books WRAPPED IN PLASTIC to facilitate my ways. <3

The last book I gave as a gift: <\/strong>
A Lost Lady and Women Who Run with Wolves. <\/div>
The nearest book on my desk: <\/strong>
I have about 15ish books on my bed right now, all various retellings of Greek myths from women's POVs...since that's the section I'm rearranging right now.  <\/div>

The last book I bought for myself: <\/strong>
My last order from amazon included the following:  "The Cult of the Divine Birth in Ancient Greece" by Marguerite Rigoglioso,  "A Long Fatal Love Chase" by Louisa May Alcott,  "Lady Audley's Secret" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, "Turn of the Screw" by Henry James, and "House of Seven Gables" by Nathaniel Hawthrone. <\/div>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:118145","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/118145.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=118145"}}],"title":"Reading Against Intent: Women in fiction, authorial intent, and negative reinvention.","published":"2011-02-08T02:56:19Z","updated":"2014-07-13T20:16:04Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"farscape"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"roswell"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"authorial intent"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"bsg"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fandom fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"meta"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"stargate"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"feminisms"}}],"content":"This is somewhat of a follow-up to my earlier meta on authorial intent fail (mainly on BSG), where I argued that writers' lack of concrete authorial intent when writing female characters leads to female characters being read in widely different ways in fandom, often in ways that the canon did not intend. I did recap the ideas from there here, but the original meta is <\/span>here<\/span><\/a>, for those interested in it.<\/span>

So I talked a bit before about the slut-shaming of certain types of characters in fandom, and I've been trying to figure out why reasons number 1 through 6 for hating Vala made me scoff and laugh at the person's fail, but the list calling her a whore inspired rage. Or how I'm generally amused by the Emma-hating that comes out of the Jean\/Scott shipper pain, but Christy Marx dismissing Emma as a slut inspired thoughts of violence.

I think what’s especially telling about fandom’s perception of Vala as a whore and Emma as a slut is that even given the traditional (and entirely sexist!) definitions of the (sexist\/offensive) words prostitute and slut, neither Emma nor Vala meet those definitions? There’s a level of patriarchal judgment going into these labels, of course. But there’s also a reinvention of canon in order to justify hating these women. (Not that it's ever<\/i> okay to call anyone by those slurs.) Which I don’t think is uncommon in fandom, so I wanted to describe, name, and give examples of this phenomenon. Because I think this is why I really can't engage with mainstream fans.

I've talked before about how the abject and\/or object position that most women occupy in fiction makes them more likely to be...interpreted widely differently by different people. And often in ways that canon didn't intend or didn't care enough to make clear. Female characters, in general, are often written in relation to the more narratively central male characters and filtered through the male gaze\/male pov\/male narrative, so the writers constantly fail to elaborate on their motivations\/desires, especially when these things fall outside the things women are traditionally seen as wanting. I had suggested earlier that we approach texts more loosely as women in terms of authorial intent, similar to how research has shown women approaching patriarchal religions. So women, when faced with problematic portrayals of women in fiction, do one of the following things with the text: reject, repress, or reinvent\/reinterpret.

I’ve always thought that part of the reason that women have a problem relating to other female characters in fiction is because so much of our fiction still approaches female characters as the other\/object. So when women consume fiction, they have to make a choice: either continue to see themselves as Subject and identify with the male subject, or identify with the women and give up the subject position. This, of course, doesn’t excuse in any way the fact that most people refuse to take that extra step in trying to approach fiction from a different POV, but it’s still a factor in how women\/minorities consume fiction and they're, of course, unfairly disadvantaged in this. So what happens when you actually realize this pattern consciously or subconsciously, or realize that fiction is treating women in ways that it might not treat men? You can either drop that show\/comic\/book, and reject it. You can repress that bit of canon. Or you can reinvent canon by writing fic, vidding, fanwanking, or having your own personal fanon or interpretation.

One of the things I mentioned off-handedly that I didn't really explore was the idea of what I called 'negative reinvention.' Where a person deliberately chooses to read a female character in such a way as to justify her\/his dislike of the character. In the absence of the female POV, we're constantly forced to rearrange bits of the narrative in our heads for them to give them motivation that the narrative didn't care to explore. And I think how we do that, in large part, indicates how we feel about female characters in general.

I remember all the post-Departure "Roswell" fanfic about Tess that explained why she chose to betray them because the narrative didn't care enough to give voice to her motivations. Or all the BSG fic explaining Boomer's or Dee's motivation because Ron Moore didn't care enough. And this is a large part of why I read fanfic. And why I read fanfic even with female characters I am not fond of in canon? Because fanfic often switches them from abject to subject position and gives them agency that the source didn't.

Fan experience, in general, I think adds a kind of multiplicity to texts and adds layers that weren't there before. My favorite part of fandom is when female characters ignored by canons are taken up by bits of fandom and their canon is expanded. I'm entirely sure that there are characters out there that I love more for the fanon created by fandom than for canon reasons, and "Roswell" is a huge example of this.

But fandom does this canon reinvention outside of fanfic, too, and it often does it negatively and in gendered ways. I...don't think I've ever read a list of reasons to hate a male character that included any sort of comment on his sexuality? And even if they do exist, I'm willingly to bet that it's largely a sexuality established in canon and not a perception of promiscuity based on lack of morals\/'revealing' outfits, etc.

I think what cemented my love for Tess, back in Roswell days, weeks before she had ever even shown up on screen, was a Dreamer-initiated hate-thread about her being a 'slut,' and that's *still* the label applied to her? Which is offensive in its slut shaming, but also especially ridiculous given that Tess, in two years of canon and for the duration of two lifetimes, *never* even crushed on anyone other than the guy she was married to. But she got slut-shamed even within canon by Maria.

Or how there was so much talk in BSG fandom of Dee marrying Lee for status and the fandom was fond of painting her as a gold-digger, which I never understood, given that, um, she didn’t really gain much out of the marriage that she didn’t already have? More importantly, there is no indication in canon of this, but this was a popular fanon among people who hated Dee.  And this is a common theory about Helen of Troy? That she ran off with Paris because of all the gold in Troy. Again, why would she give up being a queen of an entire country just so she could go be one of the two hundred Trojan princesses? Or how so much of Klytemnestra’s motivation in modern retellings is based on her being jealous of Helen, which makes no sense because Klytemnestra already is the queen of the most powerful city in Greece. But women don’t want things like power or kingdoms, they would apparently rather have BEAUTY. And in absence of concrete motivations for women, they constantly get reduced to these stereotypes. They end up being gold-diggers instead of competent officers or queens, end up being jealous of other women instead of content with being rulers. They end up being whores, sluts, hussies, homewreckers.

Or seductresses. I have huge issues with the fourth season of “Farscape” in terms of a total lack of an Aeryn point of view narrative. She comes back to Moya acting completely differently from when she left, and I waited a whole season for the narrative to give me answers only to have it reduced to, “Oh, BTW, I was still in love with John while I was away.” Because apparently, that’s the most important thing about her narrative. So I went searching for critiques of this plot arc and instead found a lot of meta trying to explain why Aeryn deserved the abusive treatment from John.  And somehow, Aeryn’s season four make-over that had valid outside the canon reasons ended up being explained by the fandom as Aeryn’s attempts to either distract John from the mission or attempts to seduce him back. And, um, how does this make sense with ANY of what we know about either of these people? But this theory is popular enough that it kept popping up in meta even by people I otherwise liked. Season four narrative left a huge gap in Aeryn’s motivation, and predictably, fandom rushed to fill it with gendered stereotypes rather than seeing problems with the way the narrative is constructed. And from my brief forays into the Stargate fandom, this is similar to the perception Jack (and I assume Jack\/Daniel) fans have of Sam? Where they see her as a distraction for Jack and generally not worthy of his interest.

And while I have repressed large bits of BSG fandom\/canon, I remember that Cally was widely hated in fandom for various reasons, one of which was that she stayed with an abusive men. (This is especially ironic because the fandom loved the said abusive man!) So she was weak and somehow deserved what she got. But Tory was too strong, assertive and all for the wrong reasons. So she also deserved what she got, apparently.

The most popular theory regarding the relationship of Emma and Scott among Emma haters is that Emma telepathically forced Scott into having sex with her when the canon shows no indication of this. But apparently, it’s easier to see a morally ambiguous female as a rapist than to admit that a male hero is actually kind of an asshole, who arguably had a history of cheating even before this incident. And the Roswell fandom was exactly the same way with Tess, where any interest Max showed in a relationship was apparently put there by Tess telepathically. Nevermind the fact that Tess’ telepathic powers did not work that way.

And then there are Bonnie and Elena from “The Vampire Diaries.” Bonnie’s totally justified and understandable reasons for hating Damon and being wary of vampires are reduced to RACISM (against vampires!), so fandom can continue to hate her for not worshipping Damon and projecting its own racism on to a WoC. And Elena is constantly dismissed as not worthy of Damon’s and Stefan’s interest because she’s 'dull.' Or hated for not being able to make up her mind between Damon and Stefan, or giving Damon mixed singles. All of which is entirely baffling because Elena has been very, very clear and assertive about being in love with Stefan and not at all interested in Damon in that way. Even DAMON knows this, but fandom continues to grasp for reasons to hate Elena, Bonnie, Caroline, Vala, Emma, Cordelia, and the list is probably endless.

And this is why I stay out of fandom outside of my friendslist because the rest of the fandom? Is apparently not even consuming the same canons I am because of how differently (and offensively!) they interpret the female characters I love. Unfortunately, fandom isn’t the only one to blame in most cases because I think that writers create problematic canons that make this possible. Bonnie has all but disappeared from canon since her issues with Damon started, Tess was retconned to make the fandom’s interpretation the valid one, much of Aeryn’s motivation for season four was left unexplained by the canon, BSG failed on epic levels at writing women towards the end, and this is not going to change until the writers start approaching some of these stories from the women’s perspective or until fandom is willing to do the same even when the writers have failed to.

And this tendency is especially frustrating when compared with how fandom bends over backwards defending male characters like Damon, Tyrol, Dean, Sylar, etc, while handwaving things like rape, abuse, murder, but if Emma dresses a certain way or Aeryn puts on make-up, it’s apparently reason enough to now hate them.

I think people have been trained to read from the men’s POV, but I think that the writers constantly forget to write women as protagonists with their own stories and end up writing them as plot devices in a man’s story. As a result, I think the female characters often become the Other for the writer. I have come across this constantly in interviews, but the two that really stand out for me are David Kemper and Ron Moore. Kemper’s perception of the Aeryn\/John relationship is this, “...the reason they weren’t together [...] it was bad timing, but it was the woman, Aeryn Sun, had absolutely no capacity to understand what living in a picket fence house in North Carolina and raising kids and dogs. She was a wild animal, that didn’t have any concept of the civilization that Crichton knew. And as you guys were talking I thought, wait a minute, this guy, he waited. He could have easily walked away from her, said this is too hard. But he knew he loved her. And even when she didn’t know that she loved him and even when she wasn’t ready to be…he waited.” Which is worse than possibly anything fandom had to say about Aeryn? Because he’s referring to her as a Woman, primarily, and not with her NAME. And Othering her further by calling her uncivilized and a WILD ANIMAL. Not to mention that he has no concept of the journey from Aeryn’s POV. It’s all about what JOHN did to deserve his happy ending, with no conception of the fact that Aeryn made sacrifices along the way as well, and she has a story, too.

Then there’s the fact that the writers constantly second guess themselves when describing the motivations of female characters. I have ranted about Dee’s suicide on BSG several times already, but what made things worse was the fact that Ron speculated on her motivations for doing that in an interview as if he couldn’t bother to give her concrete motivations or couldn’t get inside her head. Because, you know, WOMEN ARE SO DIFFERENT. And he did the same thing with Tess on “Roswell,” which, why YES, I am still bitter and angry about some ten plus years later. Then there was the time that Ron referred to Kara as a ‘slut’ in an interview.

And to point out that this isn’t limited to the male writers, we have Julie Plec saying offensive things about Caroline<\/a> while seeing things from Damon’s pov. So it’s not just the fandom’s perception of women that I constantly disagree with, but also often the writers’ view of their own female characters that are deeply offensive.
<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:117041","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/117041.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=117041"}}],"title":"The Rape of Inara: On heroines, consent, and women\u2019s sexuality. ","published":"2011-01-14T01:00:36Z","updated":"2014-07-13T05:59:26Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"jossverse"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"rape culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"romance"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"meta"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"ohworld"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"firefly"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"butjossisafeminist!"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"buffy"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"jossisnotgod"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"inara serra"}}],"content":"I've always off-handedly known that Joss had planned a gang rape for Inara by reavers at some point, but never really pursued the details past what I had briefly come across? But it's something that comes up for me often in "Firefly" discussions in the context of So Glad It Died Before That. <\/a>ide_cyan<\/b><\/a><\/span> provided some links in my last post with more details, and it was too tempting. I now have details. And thoughts. And rage, OH SO MUCH RAGE. Because the interview linked was done by Tim Minear, aka my TV God.

Hi, fuck you, Tim Minear. I have liked you in the past because while you’ve failed before, you have also been good about admitting the fail and then correcting it where possible, which is incredibly rare with writers. So I had assumed that you had gotten past the issues you had displayed randomly on Angel? Because you gave us “The Inside,” which is a wonderful deconstruction of some very problematic tropes and will never not be epic. And “Drive.” And “Wonderfalls.” All with awesome women and no rape! But apparently, it never goes away.

He goes on for almost three minutes about the Rape of Inara plot here<\/a> (around the 35 minute mark). Which apparently is what Joss Whedon used to pitch the show to him. You know, Joss the Feminist. (Honestly, at this point, I'm surprised that Buffy<\/i> had five seasons before rape entered the narrative arcs.) The word “beautiful” might have been used in the context of a RAPE PLOT. Women’s suffering\/death as beautiful? My thoughts on it haven't changed<\/a>. Just…I kind of want to crawl under a rock and avoid fandom forever. Tim Minear was the ONLY writer I had any respect left for.

Like, I do think that Minear tends to be at his worst when working under Joss. But his failure to recognize the fail of a rape plot in the context of Man Pain? At worst, he’s a horrible misogynist, and even at best, he’s one of the Joss-is-God people who can’t see anything wrong with what Joss does. Either way, NO WORDS.

Also, I am now gleefully happy that “Firefly” got canceled. Not that I wasn’t before, but now? I can almost forgive FOX for canceling all those TV shows if it means that Inara was never raped. Also, TV, can you stop having the women with sexuality be raped or otherwise punished for having it while pretending to be edgy for having women with ‘unconventional’ sexualities?



The rape plot\/arc is described thusly, "It opens with Mal and Inara fighting (as they do). Mal tells her she pretends to be a lady and wants everyone to bow before her and kiss her hand but she’s just a whore. Then the Reavers attack and take Inara. While trying to get her back they learn that she had something that would make anyone who had sex with her die. When they finally track down and board the ship they find all of the Reavers dead and Inara shaking and traumatized. They take her back to the ship and Zoe guards her room. Mal tries to get in to see her and Zoe tells him he’s the last person Inara needs to see. He pushes past her, kneels before Inara and kisses her hand."

So the framing of the episode is through Mal, who calls Inara a whore and then learns a lesson and is forced to acknowledge that she’s really a lady. This bugged me, but I could not figure out why because of the EPIC RAGE and despair, which eventually subsided to give way to thoughts: So, what makes her a respectable lady instead of a 'whore' at the end of the show? Being raped by a gang of reavers, which results in their deaths.

In other words: A woman having consensual sex that she enjoys and\/or profits from is a whore, but a woman being raped can be a lady. It's the taking away of her CHOICE that elevates her to the status of a lady because it's okay as long as she didn't want it. Is it any wonder that our fiction is so filled with RAPE when we’re not COMFORTABLE with women having consensual sex, when fiction constantly feels the need to punish women for *wanting* sex, especially sex outside the bonds of a socially sanctioned monogamous relationship? Inara is, from my brief strays into the Firefly fandom, the most hated character, which is not really surprising given how uncomfortable fandom is with certain types of heroines. But this whole attitude that Inara somehow owes Mal something and that all the sex she has as part of her profession is actually cheating on him and how she doesn't deserve him? Gah. He calls her a whore repeatedly, slut shames her, and ENJOYS it, enjoys specifically humiliating her in front of people by bringing up her profession. When she has repeatedly asked him not to, and this is our hero. The one who learns an Important Lesson from her rape.

Jessica Valenti in “The Purity Myth” states it best, “While boys are taught that the things that make them men—good men—are universally accepted ethical ideals, women are led to believe that our moral compass lies somewhere between our legs. Literally. ”

Our fiction is made up of this double standard. This is why the romance genre is so littered with rape, because heroines can be forgiven for having sex and be heroines only when they never wanted to have sex, or when the hero rapes them them, or when they want sex only with that one man for the entirety of their existence. So they get to experience it without ever wanting it because it’s the active desire that makes them 'whores,' and whores are bad. The romance hero who has had a million relationships in his past finds true love and reforms, but how many romance arcs (in or outside of romance novels) have sexually adventuress heroines who reform? Because you can’t redeem whores, apparently. Their morality is not determined by how *good* they are as people, but by how PURE and chaste they are. And it’s not even about their character because they can’t be redeemed simply by giving up their sexual liaisons because once they have fallen off of some pedestal, they’re irredeemable in patriarchal narratives.

When we made the list of anti-heroines, I had initially listed Inara, which was questioned by <\/a>nicole_anell<\/b><\/a><\/span> (<3), and it occurs to me that the reason I had done so was because all my studies in Western literature taught me that Hookers with a Heart of Gold are anti-heroines, and I have never really questioned it because I like anti-heroines and it was before I started questioning the difference between authorial intent and my own interpretation of female characters.

However, Hookers with Hearts of Gold are, of course, GOOD people with good intentions who usually end up sacrificing themselves for the greater good. So why the anti with that type of heroine? Because the flaw is a moral one where morals are judged by PURITY and not actual actions or goodness. Can you imagine a male hero with that type of personality ever being referred to as an anti-hero no matter how much sex he has? We have a whole literature made up of this, of women dying for being unconventional, often in sexual terms, because if women with sexuality are not punished properly, it somehow takes away the HEROINE bit of the anti-heroine. Because they must always, ALWAYS suffer for having a sexuality. It’s probably rarely intentional, not anymore anyway, and often just seems like ‘edgy’ plotting, but our fiction is still filled with this. Do good women get punished as often? Who are the women that usually get the rape arcs? And who learns a lesson from that rape and who is hurt the most from it, narratively speaking? I…honestly haven’t consumed enough fiction with rape to start giving examples because that’s usually my cue to stop watching\/reading, but I’m willing to bet that there are patterns and that they’re not pretty.

Also, lastly, the slew of comments following this planned plot detail for "Firefly" were all, "Oh, noes! I can't believe the show died before it got to that brilliance! Poor Joss." And these are the people apparently fit to decide who is and isn't a feminist? Not a single comment where anyone objected to the rape.<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:116957","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/116957.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=116957"}}],"title":"Joss is God, Buffy movie, and fandom pain. ","published":"2011-01-12T02:04:38Z","updated":"2014-07-12T07:45:32Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"buffy movie"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"buffy"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"joss whedon"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"jossisnotgod"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fandom fail"}}],"content":"So, apparently, in things we should fear the most in 2012, besides, you know, THE END OF THE WORLD, is a Joss-less Buffy movie. There's a petition<\/a> to boycott! With strong quotes like, "Find me one person who liked Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/i> but not Joss, and I'll show you a liar." *dies* Apparently, my friendslist is mostly made up of liars?

And then we have the bit with Joss being bitter<\/a> but trying hard not to be. YOU GUYS, even if the movie sucks, all the angst it's causing him and the "Joss is God" people is going to be worth it. And can you imagine the wank? That alone would be worth the price of admission.

I'm not saying this won't suck, because more than likely, it will fail epically. But until it does? I'm going to be happy with the fandom pain of the Joss is God people. Because at this point, people's main issue really does just seem to be the non-involvement of Joss. Really, if he were updating it? It wouldn't be as much of an update and I would have to hate it on principle as I'm now required to hate everything Joss does.

So watch me giggle and squee with glee while fandom cries over this happening without Joss Whedon. I want to keep the original concept, the epic Bechdel passing, the mythic and gothic themes, and Cordelia. Everything else? Please cut out without reservation! Starting with, um, Xander. Also, I'm going to go on record as saying that if we must have a het Buffy relationship, I need it to be closer to Buffy\/Pike than Buffy\/Angel. And! People of color! Let's try this concept with third wave feminism now, yes?

In other words, I'm still as excited as ever about this. And so glad it's finally happening after I had given up ALL hope! This better not fail me."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:114737","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/114737.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=114737"}}],"title":"Gender Fail: Pink's new video, PETA, and misogyny. ","published":"2010-11-17T02:26:56Z","updated":"2014-07-12T08:03:18Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"feminism"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"oh world"}}],"content":"So I have been seeing Pink's new video linked around the friendslist, but I have been kind of reluctant to post my thoughts on it because I tend to wait things out before posting thoughts so it doesn't seem like it's directed at anyone. Because even if it seems like it is, chances are that it's only just set off an issue I have had forever and just given me motivation to articulate it. So, usual disclaimer: it's okay to like the video, just as it's okay to love "Supernatural" even. It's defending the problematic bits of them where the problem enters, so I'm not saying you can't like this video as a feminist. However, with all the linking of the video, I have yet to see a disclaimer for the misogynistic bit in the song, so I'll leave the praising of the rest of the video to those who can look past the misogyny, and focus on, of course, the misogyny.

Here's the video.<\/a> Guess which image stuck with me? Um, yeah. The fact that I took one look at that scene and knew that Pink was a PETA supporter despite not knowing a single thing about her? *headdesk* And the video is, of course, directed by a PETA member, who happens to be a man, no surprise there. The women's abject position is made worse by the blindfolds, and notice how Pink herself is not sitting there being milked because, of course, she realizes that she's the subject of the video. Fail, fail, fail.<\/i>

I got into an argument over PETA with a friend last month while discussing animal rights and she mentioned being a PETA supporter, which led me to hunting down and spamming her with examples of PETA's fuckery, which was all very triggery and actually worse than I had believed it to be previously. So PETA's constant fail has been on my mind, and then that video didn't help. Of course, animal rights are awesome and we should all support ethical treatment of them, but aligning yourself with an organization that repeatedly uses misogynistic imagery and reinforces ugly, sexist stereotypes about women to raise awareness about animal rights would just get me to link you to PETA's misogynistic ads. If you can't be bothered to find an organization that supports animals without hating on women, I doubt your commitment to ANYONE's rights.

PETA has previously provided us with an article on how human women should be milked instead of cows, given us dead and wrapped in plastic women labeled as meat, given us a video where a man beats a woman with a bat for her fur coat, and given us posters calling fat women whales and linking their 'obesity' to meat eating. But it's to shock people into boycotting meat! Um. The animal = human metaphor doesn't quite work when you're working with women, who are not considered fully human in our society and are regularly compared to animals by sources ranging from founding Western literature to, um, Farscape<\/i> DVD commentaries: it just reinforces what most people already subconsciously believe. Because women's bodies? Not their own, and patriarchal institutions are constantly attempting to control women's bodies, so women being milked against their will? Not that far off from women being forced to have babies they do not want or having procedures performed on their bodies they're not old enough to understand. I mean, women's bodies are slaves to biology, and made for reproductive functions like birthing and milking and getting pregnant, so why not? Women constantly actually get referred to as 'meat' in sexual terms, so nothing new there. Men do beat women up (sometimes with blunt objects and sometimes to death), and one million women dying each year of from anorexia would tell you that it's not being vegan that has kept them so 'fit.' So where is the irony? ALL OF THIS IS TRUE! Maybe not in those exact terms, but when men look at naked women labeled as meat? They don't want to boycott meat because it just reinforces their beliefs and how their brains work\/have been conditioned to work.<\/a> Men watching violence against women on tv? Are more likely to commit violence against women and not more likely to, you know, eat vegetables. Possibly, the only people being SHOCKED by these ads are the people who actually think of women as fully human.

PETA's five most sexist ads for visual proof of the examples mentioned above.<\/a> Triggery material warnings apply, of course.

So thank you, Pink, for giving us this new addition to PETA's misogynistic body of work. I'm not sure about boycotting milk yet, but I will be boycotting everything you ever do in the future. Gah."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:114378","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/114378.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=114378"}}],"title":"\"Damages\" and why you must watch it. ","published":"2010-11-11T02:11:53Z","updated":"2014-07-12T08:04:56Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"bechdel passage"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pretty little liars"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"machiavellian women"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"hbic"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"ellen parsons"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"damages"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"conversion"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"patty hewes"}}],"content":"I have been meaning to plug "Damages" for over a year now, but my state of mind while actually watching is mostly squeeful love, which is hard to express in words.  But I'm going to be converting people this week, and we'll be watching it online together, so I figured now is the time to gush over its perfection and what makes it so unique and awesome.  If you know me, you know that I generally prefer genre shows and rarely watch things without sci-fi\/fantasy\/horror elements, and the only exception to that rule is that I would break that every time for awesome women, and "Damages" certainly has that.

"Damages" is a legal drama with season long arcs, which is mostly about two women, and there's plot there somewhere, but what makes it awesome is Patty Hewes, Ellen Parsons, and the relationship between them.  I admit that the plot elements of it (and 'literary' device of starting from the end of the story and going back in this case) kind of initially turned me off, but once I learned to look past them to the characters, I fell in love with all of it.  I suspect that most of you would not have an issue with the plot bits that I did because that's kind of my pet peeve as narrative arcs go.

Patty Hewes is ambitious, ruthless, and morally ambiguous in the way that characters who focus on the Big Picture often are.  What I love about her, especially, is that the show makes no excuses for her, and gives you no explanations for why she is the way she is.  For all that she wants to do the 'right' thing at the end, Patty *enjoys* power, and I LOVE seeing the show be okay with it.

At its heart, "Damages" is a story about the relationship between two women, but it's not the kind of relationship we see on TV between women often.  It starts out as a straight-forward mentor-mentee relationship where the mentor is clearly manipulating the mentee, which, HI, I have a thing for.  Ellen starts out as an ambitious but idealistic law school graduate, with Patty Hewes being the awesome, Machiavellian hardcore, big name attorney who wants to recruit her for her own devious, devious purposes.  The power balance is unequal, but Ellen is smart and learns quickly and her arc is to figure out that she's being manipulated.  The arc of the second season is Ellen manipulating Patty while Patty thinks she's still manipulating Ellen.  It's pretty damn awesome with all the double-crossing and the manipulation as you realize that Ellen cares for Patty despite herself, and Patty is starting to care for Ellen.   This is, like, everything I love about Helena\/Barbara from "Birds of Prey" turned into its own TV show. Patty Hewes, of course, is Barbara Gordon.  Ellen is slowly turning into Helena Bertinelli.

This is another thing I love about this show, Ellen's arc.  TV always does the arc where the bitchy, manipulative Mean Girl\/Pretentious Ice Princess turns into a compassionate woman who learns to care about the Greater Good and\/or people around her.  I don't think it's common to see the opposite of that arc without it being seen as a Descent Into Evil arc? But Ellen arguably has that arc.  She starts out as a Nice Girl with straight-forward motives, learns at the feet of the master, and turns the tables around in a pretty awesome way.  And the best thing about this is that the show sees this as POSITIVE character growth.  So while Ellen has held onto her idealistic ways, she's also learned to appreciate Patty's way and is not above using it when it suits her, and I love her reluctant respect for Patty, and Patty's unexpected compassion towards Ellen, but I also really love how neither of these things keep either of these women from manipulating the other for her own ends.  Hi, world, I might have a thing for Machiavellian women!  ;)

So, focus on my fictional kinks aside, a lot of "Damages" is also about how Patty and Ellen influence\/change each other, and while I had my issues with season three, the last scene between them had me convinced that I would keep watching as long as their relationship remains as complex as it has throughout the three seasons. The show doesn't want you to pick sides, and while they're often Worthy Opponents, you're clearly meant to like them both, which is incredibly rare in fiction with women seen at opposite ends of any spectrum or as rivals.  I also like how their rivalry is over ideology and morals, which is a story that we often get with men, but so rarely with women.

The end of BSG, my shunning of Dexter, and the disappointment of "Big Love" all made me appreciate the first season of "Damages" so much more than I originally did because this show passes the Bechdel test possibly in EVERY SCENE.  And would likely fail a gender reversed version of it because Patty and Ellen are the most important people on the show, and they're, arguably, the most important people in each other's lives at the end of season three. And their relationship is deeply complex, nuanced, positive, but not without its issues, which makes it arguably the most interesting and trope-defying relationship between women currently on tv?  A lot of which has to do with the fact that "Damages" is one of the very few shows on TV that's willing to give this much narrative importance to two women and the relationship between them.

So, all of this is to say, WATCH DAMAGES!<\/em> I'll be watching it tomorrow (Thursday) evening with <\/a>meganbmoore<\/b><\/a><\/span> and <\/a>aphrodite_mine<\/b><\/a><\/span> online starting this week over AIM\/Google-talk in the evenings, and you're welcome to join us for this group watch.

Some of us will also follow the "Damages" pilot with the pilot of "Pretty, Little Liars," which also manages to pass the Bechdel test in every single scene, also has awesome women, some manipulation, and pretty much all of that...in a High School setting.  Most importantly, it's ridiculously *fun.*  It's like someone rewrote all the Christopher Pike mystery books with only women.  <3

I'll try to post um...resources for the group watch later tonight or early tomorrow.   ;)"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:113547","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/113547.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=113547"}}],"title":"on erasing the original cultural context from stories. (and on Klytemnestra's awesomness. <3) ","published":"2010-10-23T00:43:37Z","updated":"2014-07-12T08:05:53Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"klytemnestra"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"oresteia"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"literature"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"context fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"review"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"greek mythology"}}],"content":"I went to the most epic performance of The Oresteia<\/i> this past weekend. The Oresteia<\/i> is my favoritest play (or really, trilogy of plays) EVER, and it's extensive, long, and hard to put on, so it's never really done. But a local liberal arts (CHRISTIAN) college invited a Greek troupe to come and perform this here in Houston. The Christian part is only relevant because I wish to rant about the very culturally-appropriative lecture we got on the plays before the actual epic performance and the effect of Christian imagery on the play's interpretation.

The university's English department head, who teaches The Oresteia<\/i>, went on to talk about how it's relevant to Christian issues. Because clearly, no one should be watching blasphemous mythic plays unless they can redefine them to fit their own belief\/moral system. One of the themes of the play is doing away with the revenge-based justice system to introduce the trial by jury order of law (the incident that the play deals with was seen by the ancient Greeks as the origin of this practice.) Within the play, the old system is associated with a lot of things, and the play sets up numerous binaries which it then pits against each other, while remaining sort of vague on which side its on. The play is dealing with evolution of a culture on a religious level, a civic level, cultural level, governmental\/monarchical level, and it also addresses the power shift from matriarchal patterns to a patriarchal system. All of these complex issues were reduced to the following, "You can see the ideals of Christianity and democracy coming to an otherwise chaotic order of things in this play." Thank gods<\/strike> God that the Christian ideals of democracy came along and civilized those savage, barbaric, evil Greeks. It's not like those evil pagans actually INVENTED democracy.

I think what really bugs me is that it's not this single incident, but it's something I have been noticing on and off for a few years now, the Christianization of Greek Polytheism. BSG does it, of course, and it's one of the things that annoys me the most. (No, Tyrol, the Greek gods actually don't CARE if you dance naked in their temples. Some of them even like that! Although, I do wish that they would smite you for...existing.). The new Clash of the Titans<\/i> is pretty much built around you thinking of Zeus as God and Hades as Satan, as is Disney's Hercules<\/i>. Hades really doesn't care to be the king of the world, really. And according to Ereshkigal, the Sumerian Underworld Goddess, rulers of the dead have a lot more power because they have the ability to "raise up the dead and to let the dead overrun the living," which makes the rest of the gods tremble in fear. Ability to bring about a zombie apocalypse? Way more awesome than the ability to throw thunderbolts.

And it seems like there's a whole movement in Christian educational institutions to revive the Greek Classics, but it's mostly being done in a Christian context and that worries me. Because these plays were performed as part of a religious festival, were filled with polytheist context, and are embedded with secrets of Greek mystery cults. And when you take away that context and reduce it to a monotheist context, you're taking away something fundamental, not to mention appropriating their religious texts to serve your own religion, which is faily all around. (WHICH! Is not at all to say that the Greeks did not do the same with the cultures they conquered, and I shall forever judge them for erasing some of our more women-positive myths in the process.) I know...the fact that it's not a religion that's widely practiced or a cultural context that's extant makes it hard to care for a lot of people, but it still makes me sad. Because I worry that if this keeps happening, we'll lose a lot of the original context and then these plays really would be all about Chaos being conquered by Civilization and nothing else.

Now, the Oresteia is very much about those things...about an order of justice being introduced, but it's also about mourning the old ways of doing things that's being overthrown because it portrays things associated with that way of life in a very nuanced way (and, say, not the way Mists of Avalon<\/i> represents Christians, who are all apparently evil.). And since the old order is associated with my favorite character, Klytemnestra, I sort of have to go with that? Give me an epic revenge narrative and I'm all over it. So, law and justice is all good for the world, yes, but narratively? Not all that interesting. (Unless Patty Hewes is delivering that justice.)<\/strike> The new order of things is represented by Orestes, who is, very possibly, my most hated character in any literature ever. My only issue with the play itself was that they used imagery to make comparisons between Orestes and Jesus (which, I'm sure, was directed by the college, given the context, and the general non-failiness of the play otherwise). I...don't think Jesus would be too happy about being compared to this misogynistic asshole, who killed his awesome mother to avenge a father who had killed two of his siblings in the name of conquering nations.

But one of the things they mentioned during the lecture was that the first play ends very peacefully, in that Klytemnestra says she'll put things right again in Argos, and that's the ending. But when Orestes kills Klytemnestra in the second play, it ends with him being hunted by the Furies, who avenge matricides. The thing is that these stories already existed, Aeschylus just took them and turned them into plays, and I really do think that he's sympathetic to Klytemnestra's side because that also explains why I deeply love this trilogy when it's basically about the Male Order of things (as identified within the way) winning out. Because this play is setting up the structure of Patriarchy, which, of course, is a historical reality, just as the myths he's working with are a historical part of their culture. So he can't change the story, but he has a lot of control over what goes inside this story. His Agamemnon is kind of iffy, while his Klytemnestra, who is often portrayed as a foolish woman who basically lets her lover talk her into killing her husband, is the driver of action here. She plans it and conducts her revenge all the way through, and her lover seems like he's only there for the fun sex he provides and not, um, for his brains. Klytemnestra gets her wonderful speech at the end, which illustrates her side of things nicely, and she gets some incredibly powerful dialoague, where she truly thinks that she's done the world a favor by ridding it of Agamemnon, and I love how she firmly believes that what she's done is right and has NO regrets. She is, by far, the strongest and most resourceful character in the play. She might've invented HBIC, really. ;) And when the play ends, she is triumphant.

In the second play, Orestes is ordered by Apollo to kill his mother in order to avenge the death of his father. He's hesitant and manpain-y about the whole thing, finally goes and does it, cries about it some more, and the play ends with him being hunted by the Furies. So the punishment for his actions comes pretty fast, and he's being punished by chatonic goddesses for his wrongs. Which is very different from Klytemnestra's punishment. Which is delayed, ordered by one god, who doesn't even care enough to do it himself. So, really, Klytemnestra's actions are, arguably, NOT punished by the gods. Not like Orestes' are, which I'm convinced is Aeschylus' way of telling us that he hates Orestes just as much as I do. ;) And Orestes wins the case, because that's what happened historically, and the Furies have to agree to let him go. But he wins by such fail arguments that I can't believe that anyone truly believed them? The argument is basically that it was more important for him to avenge his father than to respect his mother because he shares his blood with his father but not his mother. Which is absolutely ridiculous, and a point of view that's contradicted even in the play, where the furies only avenge murders committed on blood-relatives. So it almost seems like a way of pointing out how the new order of things SUCKS. Which, I agree with, of course. ;) Or at the very least, it's open to interpretation? Which, I think, is what Aeschylus is really aiming for.

However, when you present this play in a Christian context and compare ORESTES to Jesus through imagery, there's no question as to which side you want me to side with. It completely eradicates the original structure\/conflict of the play which seeks to establish both sides and gives significant narrative importance to the losing side because it sympathizes (and possibly even agrees) with that side. I suspect I might have been okay with the imagery if I hadn't gotten that opening lecture which was very much about directing your thought pattern towards consuming the play in a Christian context. And the new context now gives total preference to the Patriarchal system. I just...worry about our educational institutions if we're teaching young children to not side with Klytemnestra. ;)

In other news, I take great comfort in the fact that despite having won the case, Orestes was pursued by the Furies for the rest of his life, and died by getting bitten by a SNAKE. Which is fun. Snakes were associated with cathonic dieties, which represent Klytemnetra in the play, but snakes are also seen as negative symbols by the New Order, and Klytemnestra is compared to snakes within the play (which can be read as a positive or a negative thing, given which order you're going with.). So, um, clearly, the Furies and Klytemnestra eventually won.<3

disclaimer: this is not about christianity as much as my...distaste for mixing religion with education\/other forms of passing on a text in a way where literature\/art can't be appreciated outside that context or a context that promotes censorship\/shunning original context for religious\/moral reasons.<\/font>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:111392","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/111392.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=111392"}}],"title":"Women, Race, and Agency in Narratives: or why i stopped reading vertigo's fables. ","published":"2010-09-11T02:42:52Z","updated":"2014-07-12T08:09:35Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"gender meta"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fables"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"race fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"meta"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"comics"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender in fiction"}}],"content":"meta written for <\/em>eid_ka_chand<\/em><\/a>, exploring how race and gender play a part in fictional hierarchy and analyzing cultural\/narrative appropriation.<\/em>

Vertigo's Fables<\/em> comics were, in many ways, my reentry into comics and my first foray outside of the X-men stuff and likely the reason that I ever left the X-men bits to pursue reading any other comics. Because they were insanely awesome and combined many of my literary and fictional kinks into a wonderfully complex story about fairy tale characters, exiled from their homelands, living in modern day New York City.

The concept lent itself wonderfully to deconstructing some of the fairy tales, and one of the things I loved the most about it is that it did this by giving the damsels in distress like Cinderella, Snow White, and Briar Rose more agency than they ever had in their traditional stories. Snow White is the deputy mayor of Fabletown, a city within NYC ran and operated by fairy tale characters, but the actual mayor is just there in name and she's clearly in charge of running the entire city. We find out that she took on this role pretty much right off the boat when she arrived in NYC back in the 17th century. Similarly, Cinderella started working as a covert spy for Fabletown as soon as she arrived, and she is one of Fabletown’s greatest assets. And somehow a character trope that has always disturbed me in fiction (because it encourages taking abuse and passively waiting for things to happen because the universe will reward you for being a doormat!) became my favorite character because of how much ass she kicked in Fables-verse. We need this kind of deconstructing of our cultural stories that take passive women and give them agency, while pointing out the flaws in the original narratives. Because the original narratives are<\/em> deeply flawed.

Naturally, I spent the whole year obsessing and recommending and forcing Fables<\/em> on to everyone I could influence into reading it. Somewhere close to issue fifty, however, things started to change, and I realized that Fables allowed this sort of gender deconstructive agency only to Western women, all of whom are portrayed as being white in Fablesverse. Because somewhere around then, Fables<\/em> started introducing the Arabian fairy tale character (called fables) from the epic "One Thousand and One Nights" (Arabian Nights) into its world. There’s the predictable fail where the Arabian fables can’t communicate well in English (but Snow White had no issues communicating with the Arab fables when she went as an envoy two centuries ago!), keep slaves, and run with swords after women not dressing modestly, making it impossible for enlightened Western Fables to give them jobs. Because, you know, Arab people totally lack any ability to adapt even when they have no choice but to do so for their own survival.

Apparently, the Arabian Fables coming to our world in this day and age are so stupidly sexist that they just can't deal with the Western world, whereas, the Western Fables, who came here centuries ago (when the Western world was also very sexist) were already enlightened enough that they put Snow White in charge of a lot of things. Never mind the fact that Scheherazade from "One Thousand and One Nights" is one of the most awesomely cunning and self-sufficient fairy tale characters ever (male or female) and years ahead of most popular characters of her type being featured in contemporary stories.

The frame story of the “One Thousand and One Nights” features a King Shahryar who, after being betrayed by his wife, vows to punish all the women of his kingdom by marrying a virgin each night and then killing her in the morning, thus saving himself from the betrayal that apparently all women bring. He does this for a long period of time until Scheherazade volunteers to be his wife of the night with a plan to stop his killing ways. On their wedding night, Scheherazade asks to see her sister one last time, and the sister (as they had planned ahead of time) asks Scheherazade, who is a storyteller, for one of her stories one last time.  Scheherazade begins to tell a story with her sister and the king making up her audience, and when the morning comes, she isn’t done. So the king allows her to live for an additional day so she can finish the story. But she tells complicated tales that weave in and out of each other, stretching over years, taking care that when morning comes, she’s always at the climax of one or another tale. This goes on for three years until the king has forgotten his anger and is happy to have Scheherazade as his wife. Contrary to most popular retellings, Scheherazade doesn’t do this because she’s in love with the king. She goes into it with the very clear intent of saving other women of the kingdom, of saving her sister. And the story clearly sees her as the protagonist and doesn’t see traditional romantic love as her salvation. Rather, her words and her brain save her (and countless women) from doom.

But this is not the picture of the Arabian\/Muslim women that Fables <\/em>wants you to see. In a graphic novel entitled, “1001 Nights of Snowfall,” we find Snow White traveling to the Arab lands as an envoy, where King Shahryar chooses her to be his bride of the night, and she begins telling him Western fairy tales as a way to keep him engaged and to keep him from killing her.  (Scheherazade's sister, along with her, has been written out, so Snow's only audience consists of a man.)  One would think that Scheherazade is being written out of her own story because now Snow White has taken over her role. But Fables <\/em>is not content with writing her out and leaving her at that because when King Shahryar gives Snow White permission to leave, Scheherazade visits her.

Scheherazade is, predictably, filled with eternal gratitude for the woman who saved her from marrying King Shahryar and gave her three additional years of life. This Scheherazade is, as she was three years ago, ready to accept her lot, marry the king, and die like all the women without agency have before her. And Snow White tells her that King Shahryar is fond of stories, and Scheherazade should tell him some. And this is deeply problematic because in order to give Snow White a more prominent role, Scheherazade's story, agency, and even her personality is being taken away from her so we could have the only white person (who tells stories of only white people) in the story be the educator that all the people of color (and especially Scheherazade) learns from.

Islam was one of the first religions to give women rights to property, right to initiate divorce, contracts etc, etc, and historically, some of its literature reflects this? I'm not saying that "One Thousand and One Nights" is intentionally feminist, but the story does feature a woman with more agency than most popular stories of that day (or, even, most popular fairy tales of today, sadly) had. Instead of waiting for a prince to come to her rescue as princesses do, Scheherazade willingly offers to marry a tyrant king bent on killing all the women of the kingdom with the express plan to stop him from doing this. She has agency, she doesn't need (or want!) a guy to rescue her, she's willing to heroically step into a seemingly impossible mission to save other women, she has positive relationships with said women, and she's going to totally own the kingdom and its king not because she loves him but because she knows what's good for her, him, and the kingdom, and the women of the kingdom. And she's not going to do this by seducing him or making him fall in love with her (which is traditionally how women are given power in these stories), but instead with the power of her words and creativity.

So I really, really hate that Muslim women are portrayed as being so oppressed and meek in Fables. They're slaves, they cover their faces (but not their bodies because the male gaze must be appeased!), and they're oppressed by men who are going to kill them for wearing certain kinds of shoes. Fables took the liberty of giving the Western heroines (which are all presented as white women by Fables.<\/em>) more agency than their mythic counterparts had, but it has to take agency away from Muslim women? Because the media painted picture of *all* Muslim women as oppressed little broken birds is apparently so much more interesting than the awesomeness of Scheherazade taking down a whole kingdom with her cunning, her creativeness, and her bravery. Of course, according to "Fables," not even Scheherazade is as enlightened as her mythic version because Snow White comes up with the plan for<\/em> Scheherazade, and Scheherazade just follows in her footsteps. Yay for empowered White Victorian women (who had more agency\/education back in the 17th century than the Muslim women do in contemporary times!) teaching Eastern women like Scheherazade how to do things.

Randomly, the comic is very happy to remind you of the racial differences, calling Snow White a “rising sun” as compared to Scheherazade's “somber twilight.” Now, the color analogies aside, we would all agree that one of them is supposed to be a much more positive image than the other, right? There’s also some visual fail, some of which I posted here<\/a>.

This lack of agency for the Arabian women is also reflected in the Western women losing their agency bit by bit around the same time. Snow White becomes pregnant with non-human kids and has to go live on the farm, and Beauty, her replacement, never quite takes as prominent of a role in either the comics themselves or the running of "Fabletown." Snow White's husband, Bigby, still gets to contribute in major ways to the war effort, but Snow isn't much involved, which is a shame given that it was her efforts that turned back the original invasion early on. And while Snow White and Rose Red are pushed aside, previously unimportant male characters such as Ambrose and Boy Blue have taken over entire epic story arcs to such a degree that I got bored of all the manpain and just stopped reading. I had figured that I would go back to them after they were done telling the men's stories, but that just gave me more time to think of the race-fail, and I don't think I'll be returning to them. It's almost a good thing that they haven't gone back to writing about women because I might be tempted then.<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:111224","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/111224.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=111224"}}],"title":"Gender and Race fail -- with pictures!","published":"2010-09-09T00:44:23Z","updated":"2014-07-12T08:10:26Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"fables"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"scans"}}],"content":"So I have meta to write for eid_ka_chand. For which I have been reading some deeply fail racist\/sexist comics. Here, have a sample. It's like someone went down a list of all the Muslim and\/or Arab streotypes and checked all of them off. Even if they were inconsistent with each other!

So, Arab men are assholes who are fond of shaming women for their immodest clothing (which, well, given the century, is not a fail exclusive to any ONE race of men, sadly.) However, the immodest clothing in question is, in fact, hardcore Victorian garb:

\"\"


I guess her face is showing, which makes her slutty? But look at how the Arabian women are dressing in total fetish outfits that are totally more revealing than Snow White's outfit:

\"\"

But their heads are covered! That's the only thing that counts about Muslim women, as we all know. Otherwise, they must work harder to appease the male gaze by dressing in shimmering, sheer veils. Way to objectify women and be totally racist while doing it, Fables. What utter and total fail, GAH. *hates* And this is only the art fail. The narrative fail is much, much worse.

The tragic thing, of course, is that "Fables" used to be so awesome that it's almost entirely responsible for my reading any non-X-men comics."},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:110876","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/110876.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=110876"}}],"title":"Most Developed Character on Buffy: On Joss Whedon's Wisdom","published":"2010-09-03T00:18:47Z","updated":"2014-07-12T08:10:53Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"janeaustenisbetterthanjosswhedon"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"dollhouse"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"joss whedon"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"buffy"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"jossisnotgod"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"angel"}}],"content":"So, link on friendslist about Joss' thoughts on who the most developed character on Buffy was, and let's play a game. I'm trusting you to take the poll before reading the answer, so don't fail me, friendslist. Then I'll reveal my thoughts on his thoughts.

View Poll: The Joss Whedon Wisdom Poll<\/a><\/div><\/lj-poll-1614288>



The answer, of course, is Spike. From the article: "Joss also spoke about Spike, who he felt ultimately became the most fully developed character in the Whedonverse, coming from the lowest rung in Season Six (when he forced himself on Buffy) to someone who literally earned his own soul, as opposed to Angel, "who had a soul thrust upon him for a hundred years and moped about it."

Firstly, do I feel that Gwen Raiden got more character development in the three episodes than Spike did in three different versions of canon? Um, yes. And she didn't even have to rape anyone for it!

And Faith had an arc similar to Spike, where the change was motivated by actually *wanting* to change and not by wanting to impress a girl (okay, fine, maybe Faith's was a little about trying to impress Buffy ;) And I'm fond of arcs where the guy has to change himself for the girl because usually, it's the girl who has to change for the guy in fiction? But Spike's plot arc focus was "Look how much he loves Buffy! He's willing to give up raping, pillaging, mass murder, and torture, which are also things he loves very much!" Because we can't forget how 'cool' he used to be, and rape and torture are just things that add to a male antagonist's layers. (And he's kind of an asshole about wanting validation from her for this, and then Joss rewrote that scene to remind us that the rape was secretly Buffy's fault!). Either way, the focus is very much on his struggle for love, and not on what's good for Buffy herself. And not on how he's actually an asshole who needed to change regardless? Compare to Mr. Darcy's arc where the focus is on him actually realizing his flaws and changing because he realizes that Elizabeth was partly right about him, without any actual hope of attaining her or even *wanting* her to know how much he had done\/changed\/etc for her? And even that focus is filtered through Elizabeth's POV, which is primary and significant. (Oh, why can't more romances be like that, world? <3)

There's also a strong narrative preference for Spike's POV over Buffy's because at this point, the narrative really is more concerned about redeeming Spike than keeping Buffy likable. So we had a bunch of arcs where Buffy was siding with Spike (who, I point out once again, sort of blamed the rape on her early on!) over people who actually had her best interests at heart, and the narrative wanted you to agree with her and love Spike and not see that Robin Wood was incredibly justified in wanting him dead and doing whatever needed to be done to get there?

So that's basically Joss saying that he spent more time\/effort trying to redeem Spike from being a rapist in the last two seasons than he did developing Buffy, his heroine, in all seven seasons, where her arc was to go from an arguably selfish school girl to a fully developed epic hero of mythic proportions (Cordelia underwent a similar arc early on before it turned into the most fail arc ever.) But...I guess the plot where a rapist finds acceptance is the more important\/difficult story to tell?

From that, it's actually not hard to see how Joss Whedon then figured that the next great story that needed to be told was a story about how rapists have layers and how they're likable and have their own traumas to force them to engage in sexual activities with women without any agency\/choice in the matter. Oh, and let's not forget that Dollhouse was the perfect metaphor for men forcing their patriarchal narratives on women and done without irony or deconstruction.

The comments on the post, predictably, are all from Spike fans. One person insisted that Angel's heroic journey was more important (but not Buffy's!), and got flamed for it.

Also, for all that he likes talking about writing girls, lately, he's not even pretending to give a preference to them. Can fandom please stop talking about how awesomely feminist and how supremely women-positive and women-focused he is now<\/i>?<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:109186","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/109186.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=109186"}}],"title":"Fiction, gender, women's pain, and MAN PAIN.","published":"2010-06-23T00:18:47Z","updated":"2014-07-13T06:35:22Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"gender meta"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"bsg"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"meta"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"man pain"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"women in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"what makes me dislike fictional men"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"comics"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"joss whedon"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"buffy"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender in fiction"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"angel"}}],"content":""This one time I hit a girl with my car. It was the most traumatic experience of my<\/i> life and she kept trying to make it about her leg<\/i>. As if my pain meant nothing."<\/b>

So, I've been thinking about Man Pain, what exactly IS it, its awesome power to make me hate a character like I never thought possible, how narratives view women's pain vs. men's pain, and do women have the same kind of pain? And I have thoughts. :)

Man pain is often the fastest way to turn me off of something, but I don't think I quite realized *exactly* what man pain was until I had to watch a performance of Sophocles' "Elektra," and while watching, I thought to myself, "Oh, wow, Elektra has a lot of man pain." Elektra, of course, is a girl, which made me realize that Man Pain isn't just...pain or suffering that men undergo, but a very SPECIFIC type of pain, which is a lot more common to see in men than in women. It occurs to me that not ALL men's pain is Man Pain, which I consider to be a very specific type of fictional pain that is privileged over other sufferings\/tragedies. Possibly, it's easier to notice and define when it shows up in women (for people who don't generally notice Man Pain)? Because fiction hasn't desensitized us to it by giving it to us over and over. More importantly, narratives are aware of it more when it shows up in women and it's not treated like Universal Pain.

Elektra's biggest conflict is along the lines of Hamlet's: her mother killed her father and took a lover, while declaring herself to be the queen of the kingdom, and she claims that Klytemnestra mistreats her and is evil. People familiar with the backstory, of course, know that Klytemnestra killed her husband for very, very good reasons (like the fact that he literally sacrificed their daughter to the gods in order to win a war), but Elektra refuses to see her mother's side of the story at all, choosing to be loyal to the father she's never known and has idolized in her mind. During the story, any version of it, Klytemnestra also has major conflict in terms of dealing with her children hating her when she did it all for them to begin with, has to deal with a kingdom not used to having a woman in charge, and has to deal with the conflict between the loyalties she owes to different people. When Klytemnestra attempts to explain this to Elektra, her response is to completely stop listening once Klytemnestra admits to having killed Agamemnon because all Elektra can see is her own pain and suffering. Which, yeah: MAN PAIN.

So what is man pain? It's this tunnel-vision, narrow-minded view of one's own pain that completely overlooks and ignores how others suffer or might even suffer *more* because of the same tragedies. Elektra's entire conflict is about hating her mother, and all she can see is her own suffering, a lot of which is based on things she perceives to be true and based on having omitted important parts of the story.  And her mother? Klytemnestra has actual conflict, actual suffering, and actual issues all of which surpass Elektra's, but she can't see that because she's so focused on her own issues.

Fictional men do this. Often. More importantly, narrative pov does this by choosing to focus on men's suffering (at the expense of others'), which always makes me go, "Hmm, but what about the women?" And it's not always the women who get overlooked in this kind of storytelling, but even lesser POV characters. One good example is all the movies where a white person helps people of color make some civil right achievement, and the focus is often on how HARD it is for the white people to go against their own to help these people out, ignoring the MUCH GREATER suffering of people who have never *had* the privilege of that choice.

A more specific example of man pain is given to us on Buffy in the above-quoted immortal words of Cordelia Chase: "This one time I hit a girl with my car. It was the most traumatic experience of my life and she kept trying to make it about HER leg. As if my pain meant nothing." <3

It's...easier to provide examples with women? Because we're supposed to find what Cordelia is saying funny, and OMG, it does make me love her harder. But the narrative is also poking fun at her. Likewise, Sophocles' "Elektra" gives Klytemnestra a very clear narrative voice that, if you're paying attention and familiar with the background story, makes you question the things Elektra is saying, makes you question her sanity for having made so big a deal out of something that shouldn't have affected her this much. As I said before, fiction is more aware of this when it does this with women.

Now, fiction does this with men ALL THE FREAKING TIME. But it's not poking fun at them, and it's certainly not wanting you to question their right to suffer the most and make everyone's issues all about themselves. Because it's all justified. Because all our narratives are male-centric. Because man pain, in fact, is UNIVERSAL PAIN. And women's pain is always...gendered, and often portrayed as excessive bitching\/whining. And because fiction does it so much with men without seeing issues with it, it's sometimes harder to point out, but the problem becomes easier to spot once compared to how fiction and fandom treat women in similar situations.



And not surprisingly, fandom does this, privileges men's suffering over the women's. There was a discussion of Jean's constant Phoenix issues recently, and someone chose to talk about how hard it was on Scott, and how much he had suffered.  Because the pain he has to suffer when his wife is constantly being possessed by a god-like entity is somehow more important than the constant and consistent identity issues and loss-of-self issues and the constant dying and resurrections and all the readjusting that comes with that that Jean has had to suffer for a decade? But somehow, the fact that poor Jean has to go through all of this...justifies Scott cheating on her! How dare their life together be more about HER pain than his? He shouldn't have to stand for that! Oh, fandom.

When "Merlin" first aired, I had plans to watch it, if only because my life-long Arthurian OTP of Morgaine\/Arthur is vaguely canon, but from everything I have read, it's all about Man Pain, in terms of the focus on the dominant religion\/group and completely disregarding the very justified reasons the Lady of the Lake has for her vendetta against Uther. And while there have been a lot of complaints about how all the women are evil...I sort of love evil women, so that alone might not have been an issue for me? But evil women that the narrative feels the need to punish while valuing the Man Pain of their oppressors? Um, no. A world of no. See, Sinbad does the Evil Sorceress thing so very well with Rumina, and she never gets punished for being evil, so she just...makes me happy instead of inspiring rage.

The major reason that Adama *never* appealed to me from the get-go, and despite the fact that I loved Roslin like I love Emma Frost, and given my tendency to ship my OTCs with EVERYONE, I never, ever liked Roslin\/Adama for even a single second, was that Adama had some of the most epic (and epically HATEFUL) Man Pain in the recent years on TV. Boomer turning evil and trying to possibly doom the entire human race? All. About. Adama. I mean, seriously. His pain? More important than the possible extinction of the human race. It's *more* important for him to get his revenge than it is for humanity to survive. And people *love* this character. Certain people turning out to be Cylons? No one cares about how this affects humanity! And there's just no reason at all to worry about Tigh's own identity crisis in this. It's all about how much pain it causes ADAMA. And how he's suffered betrayal YET AGAIN. And Kara having a breakdown? Also about how she's betraying him! Who cares about what she's going through? Not Adama! Aside from the character choices that emphasize his man pain, the narrative does this, too. One major example is how the narrative sees Roslin's suffering all in the light of how it affects ADAMA in the last season. And this was the final straw. I...actually can't decide if I hate Adama more or Tyrol. But it's a tough call.

But fandom apparently loves Man Pain because look at its love affair with Wesley Wyndam-Pryce. It's hard to think of a character I dislike more for narrative reasons in Jossverse? (I hate Spike, Xander, and Topher all more, but for metanarrative reasons.) Where to start with his Man Pain? It likely started with his first appearance and the events of Buffy season three, but somehow, the fact that poor Faith was going through epic issues was all about how *he* had failed as a Watcher. Because somehow, the personal guilt of having failed at his job was more epic and important than the personal suffering of going through a mental breakdown, alienation, and loss of purpose\/destiny\/self\/friends that Faith was going through. (I don't think the narrative thinks it's more important at this point, but Wesley certainly does. Thus, narrative hatred and not metanarrative hatred.) And then there was the epic Man Pain arc he got after Connor was taken to another dimension. Because losing his friends and purpose for reasons that were *entirely* based in his own issues and stupidity was more painful\/important than Angel losing his child and going through epic betrayal all because of Wesley. And then the narrative was totally okay with Wesley torturing Justine because his MAN PAIN justified torturing women. Just like how his earlier Man Pain justified completely betraying Faith's and everyone else's trust. And not only did the writers think that all of this drama and suffering made Wesley more interesting than he had ever been before, but the fandom was happily all over it.

And the worse part is that I actually get why my friends who love Wesley love him? I don't agree with it at all, but I can understand how metanarratives have conditioned them to value this narrative? And conditioned me to understand this? But I get into at least three arguments a month with someone saying, "I just can't understand how you can love Emma Frost\/Faith\/Kara Thrace\/etc." Because heaven forbid that narratives ever focus on women's suffering. And I feel that a major criticism of Kara Thrace as a character (besides people slutshaming her and seeing her sexuality as a reason to not like her) is that she has too much suffering and the narrative focuses too much on her angst. But seriously, people, does she really have more suffering than Adama? DOES ANYONE? But when Achilles gets a whole epic about his suffering, it's literary canon, but Kara, who has pretty much the *exact same issues,* gets painted as a bitchy drama-vampire by BSG fans regularly. Sometimes, even by the narrative itself! Because we're not *used* to seeing this much narrative focus on a woman with issues, but that's a huge reason I love her? Her issues are literally epic, and actually *don't* fall under Man Pain suffering. The narrative does have a tendency to focus on her issues more than others', sometimes, but rarely more than it values the issues of men within the narrative? So I can understand why you might prefer the relatively angst-free Laura Roslin to Kara Thrace, but I'll *never* understand why Tyrol or Adama is more interesting than Kara.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong here because I've repressed much of season 4.5 of BSG, but Kara's suffering in it is very...isolated and not seen as affecting things on a larger scale in terms of, at least, affecting people around her? When she's suffering, the narrative pretty much leaves her alone, and I sort of hate everyone for not being there for her, but the icing on the cake? The scene where Adama is breaking down over his BFF Tigh's betrayal and pulling everyone into his MAN PAIN. Because his suffering of his own issues with Cylons affecting how he views his STILL LOYAL BFF is so much more important than Kara losing her sense of self and the love of her life (don't argue ;) all in the same week. And I'm sure we see a lot of this with Athena and Helo, where the narrative is so much more concerned with his personal pain of being married to a Cylon than the much greater conflict Athena probably has to deal with, what with actually *being* the outsider.

On the other hand, I do sort of appreciate that within the narrative, no one really questions the validity of Kara's suffering? Because as mentioned before, when women suffer, the narrative often questions it. I think Buffy occasionally had Man Pain, which is pretty much given with a protagonist like her (most notably during the Faith arc.), but Buffy also got called out on it by people within the narrative. And fandom never got over Buffy's 'selfish-ness' and the most common criticism of Buffy has always been that she was too selfish\/self-focused mostly coming from the fact that she complained about the suckage in her life. How, exactly? Buffy is pretty much the only epic hero or heroine I can think of who knowingly sacrificed the love of her life to save the world? During the TV era when Max Evans and John Critchton were both willing to sell out their planet\/the entire Universe to save theirs. Also, pretty much everyone on Buffy has more Man Pain than Buffy, but Buffy's is unnatural because she's a GIRL, I suppose? Sigh. Nothing makes me love Buffy like fandom's constant hatred of her for being oh-so-selfish.

So fandom likes to complain about how it doesn't like women because they just don't get the narrative arcs\/narrative focus that men do and OMG, their arcs are so gendered, but when women *do* get the arcs that fandom associates with MEN? They then get criticized for having too much focus, being too selfish, too bitchy, too aggressive, too PRESENT, INFLUENTIAL, and for driving the narrative arcs with their suffering\/issues because only men are supposed to do that, duh.

So, really, fandom, WHAT IS IT GOING TO TAKE FOR YOU TO LIKE WOMEN? When they don't get enough focus, you don't like them because they're too much in the background, when they do get the focus, you complain about how they're getting too much focus. When they're in 'traditionally feminine' arcs, they're too weak and gendered, but when they're in more action oriented arcs, they're trying to be like men, and shouldn't they be more womanly? When they're bitches, you just don't like their morals, but how many of you shun the male characters for their lack of morals? When they're too nice, they're doormats and Mary Sues.

(and, sigh, I know I have had a problem with the last one in the past. I know that I find it harder to like women who are too stuck in the male gaze and a portrait of what patriarchy wants women to be like (Fred from Angel, as well as many of Joss' characters of that type, is a good example of this, where while I liked her in theory, the execution of her arcs often left me cold.) And often, the good girls have to grow on me as opposed to my instantly falling for the morally ambiguous fictional women, but...I consider this a flaw in my own narrative approach, and I DO constantly work at improving it by defending\/writing about the characters I'm indifferent to so I can see what makes them interesting.) And I feel that the first step is admitting the problem? Because there isn't even a single one of us who hasn't been conditioned to respond in an offensive way to some narrative. But most people who don't like women would rather blame it on the type of characters they are (read: ALL TYPES) than admit that they have internalized misogyny\/misogyny issues, that they've been conditioned to respond this way, and that there's a problem on THEIR end. But when you manage to find a problem with every single female character, or even every single female character of a certain type, and ESPECIALLY when you would like that same character if she were a man, hi, YOU HAVE A PROBLEM.)

But more than that, our narratives have a problem? Because I'm so tired of having to watch John Proctor sacrifice himself and be a hero when I'm actually wondering about how much of an asshole he must've been to have inspired Abigail's epic, epic vendetta and how his poor wife is going to have to look after three children alone in a time when women didn't HAVE career options because he would rather be a hero and die than be a decent human being and actually take care of his family.

But "The Crucible" doesn't want to give me that story, because the Man Pain is more important. And I still have issues from high school when my teacher insisted I write a paper about John Proctor's Man Pain because she didn't want to read about how Abigail had good reasons for her vendetta against him. I mean, guys, this asshole was cheating on his wife with a very young girl who worked for them (and thus was his employee!), and somehow he gets to be the hero of the narrative and the poor girl he slept with, ruined, and dumped is going to be the villain? And his wife who has very good reasons to hate him is going to SUPPORT him, but his suffering is the greatest! Because fiction doesn't care about women. And it certainly doesn't care about their suffering unless they're actually dead, and even then, the pain is all about how much the MEN suffer because of their deaths.

I've never seen the last season of "Angel" and never really plan to. Before "Angel" got to that point, they had already gotten rid of all the interesting female characters, and the only way I was going to watch the show was if Lilah Morgan or Gwen Raiden were fairly recurring. But they replaced Lilah before the new season started, and when they were asked about bringing back Gwen Raiden, the writers said that Gwen would upstage Angel with the focus on her narrative arc, so they could not bring her back. But somehow, Spike wasn't going to upstage Angel by having the exact same issues\/dilemma\/superpowers?! And it occurs to me that Spike is ALLOWED to upstage Angel (why not, he upstaged Buffy on her own show), because of his Man Pain. But having Gwen would shift the focus away from the Man Pain and only men are allowed to make their issues that central to the narrative.

A few weeks ago, I had the misfortune to watch "Charlie Bartlett," which involved a rich, disturbed kid becoming a self-appointed psychiatrist for fellow students. He has a history of delinquent behavior, which has his single mother having to move him from school to school while running a company and the household. The mother is portrayed as being flaky and on tranquilizers, and the climax of the movie comes when he admits to a girl that he's always felt the need to be an adult because his mother apparently isn't one. And he feels the need to act out in school because he has to be an adult at home and take care of his mother. Which, just wow.  Your mother is on freaking TRANQUILIZERS very likely because of YOUR delinquent behavior, and just shut the fuck up about your MAN PAIN. Also, hi, you're making it worse.  Which is not to say that he doesn't have valid issues, but we constantly get this story in fiction of the absentee father that's idolized and the mother who actually stayed being vilified, often from the POV of the male child, and there's just no conception of this dynamic from her POV.

And then there was the critically acclaimed "500 Days of Summer," which consisted of nothing but a guy's Man Pain-ish POV on his relationship with a flighty girl, and we never get her POV, just his dressing her up in his patriarchal meta-narratives. The problem is that no one questions this when coming from men. And do you know how many of our metanarratives are made up of just this sort of problematic stuff? I'm sure there are countless examples of this, and the fact that I can think of at least a dozen more just off the top of my head despite the fact that I avoid fiction with a very male-centric focus? Um, yeah.

Lastly, I leave you with this, a definition of Man Pain:

Man Pain.

(n).<\/i>

1). an all-encompassing, egocentric suffering that disallows focus on anything else but the pain.
2). tunnel vision focus on one's own pain and disregard\/lack of understanding for the suffering of others. Most often experienced by fictional men.

We see this in two forms:

a).<\/i> Narrative form: Wherein the hero is focused on his pain and ways to alleviate or wallow in it, often at the expense of the suffering of others. This comes from the character's own issues and is likely to make you hate the character if you're not prone to liking Man Pain.

b).<\/i> Metanarrative form: Wherein the writers decide that the suffering\/pain of the Male hero is a lot more important than the suffering of others, which is ignored\/pushed back by the narrative. This will make you hate the writers, while still possibly liking the character.

ETA: It seems from the comments that some people are attributing the term "manpain" to me. This is not the case. It's a fandom term that already exists and is used to refer to a specific type of character arc involving brooding male heroes with lots of angst and suffering - often over a refrigerated woman - that many fans find appealing. This is just my personal\/critical definition of the term and the outlining of the metanarrative forces behind the phenomenon. :)<\/a>"},{"id":"urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:prozacpark:108963","link":[{"@attributes":{"rel":"alternate","type":"text\/html","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/108963.html"}},{"@attributes":{"rel":"self","type":"text\/xml","href":"https:\/\/prozacpark.livejournal.com\/data\/atom\/?itemid=108963"}}],"title":"List fail and Best Sci-fi\/Genre MOTHERS.","published":"2010-06-19T03:22:10Z","updated":"2014-07-12T08:17:06Z","category":[{"@attributes":{"term":"lists"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"linkblogging"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"gender fail"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"mother"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"pop culture"}},{"@attributes":{"term":"tv mothers"}}],"content":"So, the other day, I was failing in an attempt to come up with a list of important mother\/daughter relationships, and today, we have this list of fail with Best. TV. Fathers.<\/a> With people like William Adama (WTF!) and KYLE REESE on it. And MAGNETO!

So, I know that Adama is a biological father to only Lee, but he and the series refer to Kara as his daughter enough that I’m going to include that because Adama is fond of disowning Kara randomly when she does stuff he doesn’t approve of. I’m pretty sure Lee never gets disowned?

And I seriously don’t remember any of the Terminator movies and am missing much of Kyle Reese’s story, but this is why he deserves to be on this list, “He might've been an absentee dad — almost as absentee as you can get, given that he was a dead time-traveler for much of John Connor's adolescence — but he put Sarah Connor on the path towards the future and armed her with knowledge (and knocked her up).”

So he’s on it for…providing the DNA? I’m sure we call that a sperm donor and not, um, a father. I’m mostly annoyed that he’s now somehow responsible for all of Sarah’s awesome.

So that’s the least the men have to do to be on the list, but I doubt the Supernatural mom will be on a similar list for PROVIDING THE REFRIGERATED MOTIVATION FOR THEIR ENTIRE NARRATIVE?

And! Magneto is on the list. Which is just…hasn’t he canonically tried to hit on\/sleep with BOTH his daughters? And the time when he tried to get Scott to call him Daddy to make Pietro jealous? *dies*

But, anyway, you guys know what this calls for, yes? It’s time for a list! Of awesome sci-fi\/speculative\/genre fiction mothers. And of course, we’ll start with Sarah Connor. I’m also going to add a star if the child is a daughter for ease of making my other list, and would appreciate it if you can do the same when you add to it?

1). Medea <\/s>
1). Sarah Connor (Terminator franchise)
2). Rita Sue Dreyfuss (Carnivale)*
3). Lois Herickson (Big Love)
4). Darla (Buffyverse) – absentee parent who actually CONTRIBUTED!
5). Klytemnestra (Greek Mythology)*
6). Diane Evans (Roswell)*
7). Pearl (Vampire Diaries)*
8). Amy DeLuca (Roswell)*
9). Sita\/Alisa Perne (Last Vampire series)*
10). Vala Mal Doran (Stargate)*
11). Joyce Summers (Buffy)*
12). Nicki Grant (Big Love)*
13). Demeter (Greek Mythology)*
14). Snow White (Fables)
15). Madelyne Pryor (X-men) DO NOT ARGUE WITH ME ON THIS. ;)

I shall edit and add later. But I think, in general, fiction seems to fall all over itself giving MEN credit for the tiniest of things, but women have to literally die and get refrigerated before they’re allowed to be important to narratives. And we all know that dead mothers provide much more motivation than live ones! This is when fiction isn’t ignoring their existence altogether."}]}